The Man-made World: Or, Our Androcentric Culture

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THE

Man-Made World

OR.

OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE

BY

CHARLOTTE PERKINS QILMAN

THIRD EDITION

• •

• • •

rf •* I ^ s

CHARLTON COMPANY
NEW YORK

7814

Copyright 1911

by

CHARLOTTE PERKINS OILMAN

245671

'•;

-•• • •

• • • • *

• •

• •

••• ••

• • •

• •

• •

II*

N^

This book is dedicated with reverent
love and gratitvde

to

Lestee F. Wakd

Sociologist and Humanitarian^ one of the
world's great men; a creative thinker to
whose wide knowledge and power of vision
we are indebted for a new grajsy of the na-
ture and processes of Society, and to whom
all women are especially bound in honor and
gratitude for his Gynaecocentric Theory of
Life, than which nothing so important to
humanity has been advanced since the
Theory of Evolution, and nothing so inir
portant to women has ever been given to the
world.

ar

PREFACE

Those who wish to study the underlying
facts on which this book is based are referred
to "Pure Sociology," by Lester F. Ward,
chapter XIV, in which the Androcentric
Theory of Life is fairly defined and con-
trasted with the Gynaecocentric Theory.

That this last is disputed by the majority
of present day biologists will not surprise
anyone who reads it and who is familiar
with the nature of the human mind. All
new scientific discoveries are slow of uni-
versal acceptance; and anything so sub-
versive of historic custom as this, involving
so complete a change of attitude regarding
the relations of the sexes to one another and
to Society, cannot be expected to make
rapid progress in popular belief. Time,
study and experience may be trusted to
establish the truth.

Assuming the Gynaecocentric Theory to
be the true one — ^that the female is the race
type, and the male, originally but a sex type,
reaching a later equality with the female,
and, in the human race, becoming her master
for a considerable historic period — ^this book

i

gives a series of studies of the eflFeet upon
our human development of this unprece-
dented dominance of the male, showing it to
be by no means an unmixed good.

In so utterly untrodden a field, it is more
than probable that errors may occur, and
that, in view of the colossal injustice in-
volved, some natural animus may occasion-
ally be visible; but if any man be offended
by such error in fact or feeling, let him ex-
amine the many books that have been writ-
ten about women.

Men have written copiously about women,
treating them always as females, with an
offensiveness and falsity patent to modem
minds. This book treats of men as males in
contradistinction to their qualities as human
beings, but never approaches for a moment
the abusiveness and contempt that has been
shown to women as females.

It grants to men, today, a high preemi-
nence over women in himian development,
but shows this preeminence to be a distinc-
tion of humanity and not of sex, fully open
to women if they use their human powers.

When we learn to differentiate between
humanity and masculinity we shall give
honor where honor is due.

CONTENTS

PAGE
I. As TO HUMANNESS 9

II. The Man-Made Family 26

III. Health and Beauty 44

IV. Men and Aet 70

V. Masculine Literatube 87

VI. Games and Spoets 107

VII. Ethics and Religion 126

VIII. Education 148

IX. "Society'' and "Fashion". . . 168

X. Law and GtOveenment 178

XI. Cbime and Punishment 198

XII. Politics and Waefabe 208

XIII. Industry and Economics . . . 227

XIV. A Human Woeld 244

• -o-.

«

CHAPTER I.

AS TO HUMANNESS

• « •

J 7 . '

9 «

LET us begin, inoffensively, with
sheep. The sheep is a beast with
which we are all familiar, being
much used in religious imagery; the com-
mon stock of painters; a staple article of
diet; one of our main sources of clothing,
and an everyday symbol of bashfulness and
stupidity.

In some grazing regions the sheep is an
object of terror, destroying grass, bush and
forest by omnipresent nibbling; on the great
plains, sheep-keeping frequently results in
insanity, owing to the loneliness of the shep-
herd, and the monotonous appearance and
behavioi^ of the sheep.

By thj poet, yoimg sheep are preferred,
the lamb gambolling gaily; unless it be in
hymns, where "all we like sheep" are repeat-

• •

• •.

10 THE Mt^NrHl'ADE WORLD

* • • • •
. • • •

edly desci^b^/ and much stress is laid upon

• • • •

the straying* propensities of the animal.

TcT-.the scientific mind there is special in-
..tfefegst'in the sequacity of sheep, their habit
•../'•bf following one another with automatic
* * * ' imitation. This instinct, we are told, has
been developed by ages of wild crowded
racing on narrow ledges, along precipices,
chasms, around sudden spurs and comers,
only the leader seeing when, where and how
to jump. If those behind jumped exactly as
he did, they lived. If they stopped to ex-
ercise independent judgment, they were
pushed oflF and perished; they and their
judgment with them.

All these things, and many that are simi-
lar, occur to us when we think of sheep.
They are also ewes and rams. Yes, truly;
but what of it? All that has been said was
said of sheep, genua ovis, that bland beast,
compound of mutton, wool, and foolishness,
so widely known. If we think of the sheep-
dog (and dog-ess), the shepherd (and shep-
herd-ess), of the ferocious sheep-eating bird
of New Zealand, the Kea (and Kea-ess),
all these herd, guard, or kill the sheep, both

AS TO HUMANNESS 11

rams and ewes alike. In regard to mutton,
to wool, to general character, we think only
of their sheepishness, not at all of their ram-
ishness or eweishness. That which is ovine
or bovine, canine, feUne or equine, is easily
recognized as distinguishing that particular
species of animal, and has no relation what-
ever to the sex thereof.

Returning to our muttons, let us consider
the ram, and wherein his character differs
from the sheep. We find he has a more
quarrelsome disposition. He paws the earth
and makes a noise. He has a tendency to
butt. So has a goat — ^Mr. Goat. So has
Mr. Buffalo. This tendency to plunge head
foremost at an adversary — ^and to fmd any
other gentleman an adversary on sight —
does not pertain to sheep, to genus ovis;
but to any male creature with horns.

As "function comes before organ," we
may even give a reminiscent glance down
the long path of evolution, and see how the
mere act of butting — passionately and per- ,
petually repeated — ^born of the belligerent
spirit of the male — produced horns!

The ewe, on the other hand, exhibits love

N\

12 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

and care for her little ones, gives them milk
and tries to guard them. But so does a goat
— Mrs. Goat. So does Mrs. Buffalo and
the rest. This mother instinct is no pecu-
liarity of genus ovis, but of any female
creature.

Even the bird, though not a mammal,
shows the same mother-love and mother-
care, while the father bird, though not a but-
ter, fights with beak and wing and spur.
His competition is more effective through
display. The wish to please, the need to
please; the overmastering necessity upon
him that he secure the favor of the female,
has made the male bird blossom like a but-
terfly. He blazes in gorgeous plumage,
rears haughty crests and combs, shows
drooping wattles and dangling blobs such
as the turkey-cock affords; long splendid
feathers for pure ornament appear upon
him; what in her is a mere tail-effect be-
comes in him a mass of glittering drapery.

Partridge-cock, farmyard-cock, peacock,
from sparrow to ostrich, observe his mien!
To strut and languish; to exhibit every
beauteaus lure; to sacrifice ease, comfort.

AS TO HUMANNESS 13

speed, everything — ^to beauty — ^for her sake
— ^this is the nature of the he-bird of any
species ; the characteristic, not of the turkey,
but of the cock! With drumming of loud
wings, with crow and quack and bursts of
glorious song, he woos his mate; displays
his splendors before her ; fights fiercely with
his rivals. To butt — ^to strut — ^to make a
noise — ^all for love's sake; these acts are
common to the male.

We may now generalize and clearly state :
That is masculine which belongs to the male
— ^to any or all males, irrespective of species.
That is feminine which belongs to the fe-
male, to any or all females, irrespective of
species. That is ovine, bovine, feline, ca-
nine, equine or asinine which belongs to that
species, irrespective of sex.

In our own species all this is changed.
We have been so taken up with the phe-i
nomena of masculinity and femininity, that
our common humanity has largely escaped
notice. We know we are human, naturally,
and are very proud of it ; but we do not con-
sider in what our humanness consists; nor
how men and women may fall short of it, or

14 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

overstep its bounds, in continual insistence
upon their special differences. It is "manly"
to do this; it is "womanly" to do that; but
what a human being should do under the
circumstances is not thought of.

The only time when we do recognize what
we call "common humanity" is in extreme
cases, matters of life and death ; when either
men or women are expected to behave as if
they were also human creatures. Since the
range of feeling and action proper to hu-
manity, as such, is far wider than that
proper to either sex, it seems at first some-
what remarkable that we have given it so
little recognition.

A little classification will help us here.
We have certain qualities in common with
inanimate matter, such as weight, opacity,
resilience. It is clear that these are not
human. We have other qualities in com-
mon with all forms of life ; cellular construc-
tion, for instance; the reproduction of cells
and the need of nutrition. These again are
not human. We have others, many others,
common to the higher mammals; which are
not exclusively ours — ^are not distinctively

AS TO HUMANNESS 15

human. What then are true human charac-
teristics? In what way is the human species
distinguished from aU other species?

Our human-ness is seen most clearly in ^
three main lines : it is mechanical, psychical |
and social. Our power to make and use*
things is essentially human; we alone have
extra-physical tools. We have added to our
teeth the knife, sword, scissors, mowing
machine; to our claws the spade, harrow,
plough, drill, dredge. We are a protean
creature, using the larger brain power
through a wide variety of changing weapons.
This is one of our main and vital distinc-
tions. Ancient animal races are traced and
known by mere bones and shells, ancient
human races by their buildings, tools and
utensils.

That degree of brain development which
gives us the human mind is a clear distinc-
tion of race. The savage who can count a
hundred is more human that the savage who
can count ten.

More prominent than either of these is
the social nature of humanity. We are by
no means the only group-animal; that

16 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

ancient type of industry the ant, and even
the well-worn bee, are social creatures. But
insects of their kind are found living alone.
Human beings never. Our human-ness be-
gins with some low form of social relation
and increases as that relation develops.

Human life of any sort is dependent upon
what Kropotkin calls "mutual aid," and hu-
man progress keeps step absolutely with
that interchange of specialized services
which makes society organic. The nomad,
living on cattle as ants live on theirs, is
less human than the farmer, raiding food by
intelligently applied labor; and the exten-
sion of trade and commerce, from mere vil-
lage market-places to the world-exchanges
of today, is extension of human-ness as well.

Humanity, thus considered, is not a thing
made at once and unchangeable, but a stage
of development; and is still, as Wells de-
scribes it, "in the making." Our human-
ness is seen to lie not so much in what we
are individually, as in our relations to one
another; and even that individuality is but
the result of our relations to one another.
It is in what we do and how we do it, rather

^5* TO HUMANNESS 17

than in what we are. Some, philosophically
inclined, exalt "being" over "doing." To
them this question may be put: "Can you
mention any forms of life that merely 'is,'
without doing anything?"

Taken separately and physically, we are
animals, genus homo; taken socially and
psychically, we are, in varying degree, hu-
man ; and our real history lies in the develop-
ment of this human-ness.

Our historic period is not very long. Real
written history only goes back a few thou-
sand years, beginning with the stone records
of ancient Egypt. During this period we
have had almost universally what is here
called an Androcentric Culture. The his-
tory, such as it was, was made and written
by men.

The mental, the mechanical, the social de-
velopment, was almost wholly theirs. JWe
have, so far, lived and suffered and died in
a man-made world. So general, so im-
broken, has been this condition, that to men-
tion it arouses no more remark than the
statement of a natural law. We have taken
it for granted, since the dawn of civilization,

18 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

that ^^mankind" meant men-kind, and the

world was theirs.

-^ Ar Women we have sharply delimited.

I Women were a sex; "the sex," according to

] chivalrous toasts; they were set apart for

Mspecial services peculiar to femininity. As

one English scientist put it, in 1888,

"Women are not only not the race — ^they

are not even half the race, but a sub-species

told off for reproduction only."

This mental attitude toward women is
even more clearly expressed by Mr. H. B.
Marriot-Watson in his article on "The
American Woman" in the "Nineteenth
Century" for June, 1904, where he says:
"Her constitutional restlessness has caused
her to abdicate those functions which alone
excuse or explain her existence." This is a
peculiarly happy and condensed expression
f the relative position of women during our
androcentric culture. The man was ac-
cepted as the race type without one dis-
sentient voice; and the woman — b. strange,
diverse creature, quite disharmonious in the
accepted scheme of things — ^was excused
and explained only as a female.

AS TO HUMANNESS 19

She has needed volumes of such excuse
and explanation; also, apparently, volumes
of abuse and condemnation. In any library
catalogue we may find books upon books
about women: physiological, sentimental,
didactic, religious — ^all manner of books
about women, as such. Even to-day in the
works of Marholm — ^poor young Weininger,
Moebius, and others, we find the same per-
petual discussion of women — as such^

This is a book about men — ^as such. It
differentiates between the human nature i
and the sex nature. It will not go so far \
as to allege man's masculine traits to be all 1
that excuse or explain his existence; but |
it will point out what are masculine traits as
distinct from human ones, and what has
been the effect on our human life of the uif j
bridled dominance of one sex. "^

We can see at once, glaringly, what would
have been the result of giving all human
affairs into female hands. Such an extraor^
dinary and deplorable situation would have
"feminized" the world. We should have all
become "effeminate."

See how in our use of language the case

THE MAN-UADE WORLD

I
I

is clearly shown. The adjectives and de-
rivatives based on woman's distinctions are
alien and derogatory when applied to hu-
man affairs; "effeminate" — too female, con-
notes contempt, but has no masculine
analogue ; whereas "emasculate" — ^not
enough male, is a term of reproach, and has
no feminine analogue. "Virile" — manly, we
oppose to "puerile" — childish, and the very
word "virtue" is derived from "vir" — a man.

Even in the naming of other animals we
have taken the male as the race type, and
put on a special termination to indicate "his
female," as in lion, lioness; leopard, leop-
ardess; while all our human scheme of things
rests on the same tacit assumption; man be-
ing held the human type; woman a sort of
accompaniment and subordinate assistant,
' merely essential to the making of people.

She has held always the place of a prepo-
sition in relation to man. She has been con-
sidered above him or below him, before him,
behind him, beside him, a wholly relative ex-
istence — "Sydney's sister," "Pembroke's
mother" — but never by any chance Sydney
or Pembroke herself.

AS TO HUMANNESS 21

Acting on this assumption, all human
standards have been based on male char-
acteristics, and when we wish to praise th3
work of a woman, we say she has "a masciij
line mind."

It is no easy matter to deny or reverse a
universal assumption. The human mind
has had a good many jolts since it began
to think, but after each upheaval it settles
down as peacefully as the vine-growers on
Vesuvius, accepting the last lava crust as
permanent ground.

What we see immediately around us,
what we are born into and ^ow up with,
be it mental furniture or physical, we as-
sume to be the order of nature.

If a given idea has been held in the human
mind for many generations, as almost all
our common ideas have, it takes sincere and
continued effort to remove it; and if it is
one of the oldest we have in stock, one of
the big, common, unquestioned world ideas,
vast is the labor of those who seek to
change it.

Nevertheless, if the matter is one of im-
portance, if the previous idea was a palpable

22 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

error, of large and evil effect, and if the
new one is true and widely important, the
effort is worth making.

The task here midertaken is of this sort.
' It seeks to show that what we have all this
\ time called "hmnan nature" and deprecated,
I ' was in great part only male nature, and
good enough in its place ; that what we have
called "masculine" and admired as such, was
in large part human, and should be applied
to both sexes; that what we have called
: "feminine" and condemned, was also largely
human and applicable to both. Our andro-
centric culture is so shown to have been,
and still to be, a masculine culture in excess,
.and therefore undesirable.

In the preUminary work of approaching
these facts it will be well to explain how it
can be that so wide and serious an error
should have been made by practically all
men. The reason is simply that they were
men. They were males, and saw women as
females — and not otherwise.

So absolute is this conviction that the man
who reads will say, "Of course! How else
are we to look at women except as fe-

AS TO HUMANNESS 23

males? They are females, aren't they?"
Yes, they are, as men are males miquestion-
ably ; but there is possible the frame of mind
of the old marquise who was asked by an
English friend how she could bear to have
the footman serve her breakfast in bed — ^to
have a man in her bed-chamber — ^and re-
plied sincerely, "Call you that thing there
a man?"

The world is full of men, but their prin- ^
cipal occupation is human work of some
sort; and women see in them the human dis-
tinction preponderantly. Occasionally some
unhappy lady marries her coachman — ^long
contemplation of broad shoulders having an
effect, apparently ; but in general women see
the human creature most ; the male creature
only when they love.

To the man, the whole world was hij
world; his becSeiuse he was male; and the
whole world of woman was the home; be-
cause she was female. She had her pre-
scribed sphere, strictly limited to her femi-
nine occupations and interests; he had all
the rest of life ; and not only so, but, having
it, insisted on calling it male.

24 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

This accounts for the general attitude of
men toward the now rapid humanization of
women. From her first faint struggles to-
ward freedom and justice, to her present
valiant efforts toward full economic and po-
Utical equality, each step has been termed
"unfeminine," and resented as an intrusion
upon man's place and power. Here shows
the need of our new classification, of the
three distinct fields of life — ^masculine, femi-
/ nine and human.

r As a matter of fact, there is a "woman's
^ / sphere," sharply defined and quite different
/ from his; there is also a "man's sphere," as
j sharply defined and even more limited; but
I there remains a common sphere — ^that of
^humanity, which belongs to both alike.

In the earlier part of what is known as
"the woman's movement," it was sharply
opposed on the ground that women would
become "unsexed." Let us note in pass-
ing that they have become unsexed in one
particular, most glaringly so, and that no
one has noticed or objected to it.

As part of our androcentric culture, we
may point to the peculiar reversal of sex

AS TO HUMANNESS 25

characteristics which makes the human fe-
male carry the burden of ornament. She
alone, of all human creatures, has adopted
the essentially masculine attribute of special
sex-decoration; she does not fight for her
mate, as yet, but she blooms forth as the
peaxjock and bird of paradise, in poignant
reversal of nature's laws, even wearing mas-
culine feathers to further her feminine ends.

Woman's natural work as a female is
that of the mother; man's natural work as
a male is that of the father; their mutual /
relation to this end being a source of joy i
and well-being when rightly held: but hu- /
man work covers all our life outside of these /
specialities. Every handicraft, every pro-/
fession, every science, every art, all normal'
amusements and recreations, all govern^
ment, education, religion; the whole living^
world of human achievement: all this is\
human.

That one sex should have monopolized alK""^
human activities, called them "man's work,"
and managed them as such, is what is meant
hy the phrase "Androcentric Culture."

26 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

CHAPTER II

THE MAN-MADE FAMILY

THE family is older than humanity,
and therefore cannot be called a
human institution. A postoffice,
now, is wholly human ; no other creature has
a postoffice, but there are families in plenty
among birds and beasts; all kinds perma-
nent and transient; monogamous, poly-
gamous and polyandrous.

We are now to consider the growth of the
family in humanity; what is its rational de-
velopment in humanness; in mechanical,
mental and social lines; in the extension of
love and service; and the effect upon it of
this strange new arrangement — a masculine
proprietor.

Like all natural institutions the family
has a purpose; and is to be measured pri-
marily as it serves that purpose; which is.

THE MAN-MADE FAMILY 27

the care and nurture of the young. To pro-
tect the helpless little ones, to feed and shel-
ter them, to ensure them the benefits of an
ever longer period of immaturity, and so to
improve the race — ^this is the original pur-
pose of the family.

When a natural institution becomes hu-
man it enters the plane of consciousness.
We think about it; and, in our strange new
power of voluntary action, do things to it.
We have done strange things to the family;
or, more specifically, men have.

Bal^c, at his bitterest, observed,

^^^.^^^Woman's virtue is man's best invention."

"'^^ Bailee was wrong. Virtue — ^the unswerving

devotion to one mate — ^is common among

birds and some of the higher mammals. If

Balskc meant celibacy when he said virtue,

why that is one of man's inventions — ^though

hardly his best.

>^Wliat man has done to the family, speak-

y/ing broadly, is to change it from an institu-

./ tion for the best service of the child to one

modified to his own service, the vehicle of

his comfort, power and pride.

Among the heavy millions of the unstirred

28 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

East, a child — necessarily a male child — is
desired for the credit and glory of the father,
and his fathers; in place of seeing that all
a parent is for is the best service of the child.
Ancestor worship, that gross reversal of all
natural law, is of wholly androcentric origin.
It is strongest among old patriarchal races;
lingers on in feudal Europe ; is to be traced
even in America to-day in a few sporadic
efforts to magnify the deeds of our an-
cestors.

The best thing any of us can do for our
ancestors is to be better than they were ; and
we ought to give our minds to it. When we
use our past merely as a guide-book, and
concentrate our noble emotions on the pres-
ent and future, we shall improve more
rapidly.

The peculiar changes brought about in
family life by the predominance of the male
are easily traced. In these studies we must

tkeep clearly in mind the basic masculine
characteristics: desire, combat, self-expres-
sion; all legitimate and right in proper use,
only mischievous when excessive or out of
place. Through them the male is led to

1

THE MAN-MADE FAMILY 29

strenuous competition for the favor of the
female; in the overflowing ardour of song,
as in nightingale and tom-cat; in wasteful
splendor of personal decoration, from the
pheasant^s breast to an embroidered waist-
coat; and in direct struggle for the prize,
from the stag's locked horns to the clashing
spears of the tournament.

It is earnestly hoped that no reader will
take offence at the necessarily frequent ref-
erence to these essential features of male-
ness. In the many books about women it is,
naturally, their femaleness that has been
studied and enlarged upon. And though
women, after thousands of years of such
discussion, have become a little restive under
the constant use of the word female: men,
as rational beings, should not object to an
analogous study — ^at least not for some time
— a few centuries or so.

How, then, do we find these masculine
tendencies, desire, combat and self-expres-
sion, affect the home and family when given
too much power?

First comes the effect in the preliminary
work of selection. One of the most uplift-

^.

30 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

ing forces of nature is that of sex selection.
The males, numerous, varied, pouring a
flood of energy into wide modifications,
compete for the female, and she selects the
victor ; thus securing to the race the new im-
provements.

In forming the proprietary family there
is no such competition, no such selection.
The man, by violence or by purchase, does
the choosing — ^he selects the kind of woman
that pleases him. Nature did not intend him
to select; he is not good at it. Neither was
the female intended to compete — she is not
good at it.

If there is a race between males for a mate
— ^the swiftest gets her first ; but if one male
is chasing a number of females he gets the
slowest first. The one method improves our
speed : the other does not. If males struggle
and fight with one another for a mate, the
strongest secures her; if the male struggles
and fights with the female (a peculiar and
unnatural horror, known only among hu-
man beings), he most readily secures the
weakest. The one method improves our
strength — ^the other does not.

THE MAN-MADE FAMILY 31

When women became the property of
men; sold and bartered; "given away" by
their paternal owner to their marital owner ;
they lost this prerogative of the female, this
primal duty of selection. The males were
no longer improved by their natural com-
petition for the female ; and the females were
not improved; because the male did not se-
lect for points of racial superiority, but for
such qualities as pleased him.

There is a locality in northern Africa,
where young girls are deliberately fed with
a certain oily seed, to make them fat, — ^that
they may be the more readily married, — as
the men like fat wives. Among certain more
savage African tribes the chief's wives are
prepared for him by being kept in small
dark huts and fed on "mealies" and mo-
lasses; precisely as a Strasbourg goose is
fattened for the gourmand. Now fatness is
not a desirable race characteristic; it does
not add to the woman's happiness of eflS-
ciency; or to the child's; it is merely an ac-
cessory pleasant to the master; his attitude
being much as the amorous monad ecstati-

32 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

cally puts it, in Sill's quaint poem, "Five
Lives,"

**0 the little female monad's lips !
O the little female monad's eyes !
O the little, little, female, female monad !"

This ultra littleness and ultra f emaleness
has been demanded and produced by our
Androcentric Culture.

Following this, and part of it, comes the
effect on motherhood. This function was
the original and legitimate base of family
life; and its ample sustaining power
throughout the long early period of "the
mother-right;" or as we call it, the matri-
archate ; the father being her assistant in the
great work. The patriarchate, with its pro-

ietary family, changed this altogether; the
woman, as the property of the man, was con-
sidered first and foremost as a means of
pleasure to him; and while she was still
valued as a mother, it was in a tributary ca-
pacity. Her children were now his; his
property, as she was; the whole enginery of
the family was turned from its true use to

THE MAN-MADE FAMILY 33

this new one, hitherto unknown, the service
of the adult male.

To this day we are living under the in-
fluence of the proprietary family. The duty
of the wife is held to involve man-service as
well as child-service; and indeed far more;
as the duty of the wife to the husband quite
transcends the duty of the mother to the
child.

See for instance the English wife staying
with her husband in India and sending the
children home to be brought up; because
India is bad for children See our common
law that the man decides the place of resi-
dence ; if the wife refuses to go with him to
howsoever unfit a place for her and for the
little ones, such refusal on her part consti-
tutes "desertion" and is ground for divorce.

See again the idea that the wife must re-
main with the husband though a drunkard,
or diseased ; re^rdless of the sin against the
child involved in such a relation. Public
feeling on these matters is indeed changing;
but as a whole the ideals of the man-made
family still obtain.

The effect of this on the woman has been

34 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

inevitably to weaken and over-shadow her
sense of the real purpose of the family; of
the relentless responsibilities of her duty as
a mother. She is first taught duty to her
parents, with heavy religious sanction; and
then duty to her husband, similarly but-
tressed ; but her duty to her children has been
left to instinct. She is not taught in girl-
hood as to her preeminent power and duty
as a mother; her yoimg ideals are all of de-
votion to the lover and husband, with only
the vaguest sense of results.

The young girl is reared in what we call
'innocence"; poetically described as
'bloom"; and this condition is held to be
one of her chief "charms." The requisite
is wholly androcentric. This "innocence"
does not enable her to choose a husband
f wisely; she does not even know the dangers
that possibly confront her. We vaguely
imagine that her father or brother,. who do
know, will protect her. Unfortunately the
father and brother, under our current
"double standard" of morality, do not judge
the applicants as she would if she knew the
nature of their offenses.

"i

THE MAN-MADE FAMILY 35

Furthennore, if her heart is set on one of
them, no amount of general advice and op-
position serves to prevent her marrying him.
"I love him!" she says, sublimely. "I do not
care what he has done. I will forgive him.
I will save him!"

This state of mind serves to forward the
interests of the lover, but is of no advantage
to the children. We have magnified the
duties of the wife, and minified the duties ^
of the mother; and this is inevitable in a
family relation every law and custom of
which is arranged from the masculine view-
point.

From this same viewpoint, equally essen-
tial to the proprietary family, comes the re-
quirement that the woman shall serve the
man. Her service is not that of the associate
and equal, as when she joins him in his busi-
ness. It is not that of a beneficial combina-
tion, as when she practices another business
and they share the profits ; it is not even that
of the specialist, as the service of a tailor or
barber; it is personal service — ^the work of a/
servant. v.

In large generalization, the women of the

36 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

world cook and wash, sweep and dust, sew
and mend, for the men.

We are so accustomed to this relation;
have held it for so long to be the "natural"
relation, that it is difficult indeed to show
it to be distinctly unnatural and injurious.
The father expects to be served by the
daughter, a service quite different from what
he expects of the son. This shows at once
that such service is no integral part of
motherhood, or even of marriage ; but is sup-
posed to be the proper industrial position of
women, as such.

Why is this so? Why, on the face of it,
given a daughter and a son, should a form of
service be expected of the one, which would
be considered ignominious by the other?

The imderlying reason is this. Industry,
at its base, is a feminine function. The sur-
plus energy of the mother does not manifest
itself in noise, or combat, or display, but in
productive industry. Because of her
mother-power she became the first inventor
and laborer; being in truth the mother of all
industry as well as all people.

Man's entrance upon industry is late and

THE MAN-MADE FAMILY 37

reluctant; as will be shown later in treating
his effect on economics. In this field of fam-
ily life, his effect was as follows :

Establishing the proprietary family at an
age when the industry was primitive and
domestic; and thereafter confining the
woman solely to the domestic area, he
thereby confined her to primitive industry.
The domestic industries, in the hands of
women, constitute a survival of our remotest
past. Such work was "woman's work" as
was all the work then known; such work is
still considered woman's work because they
have been prevented from doing any other.

The term "domestic industry'* does not
define a certain kind of labor, but a certain
grade of labor. Architecture was a domestic
industry once — ^when every savage mother
set up her own tepee. To be confined to
domestic industry is no proper distinction
of womanhood; it is an historic distinction,
an economic distinction, it sets a date and
limit to woman's industrial progress.

In this respect the man-made family has
resulted in arresting the development of half
the world. We have a world wherein men,

^

/

38 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

industrially, live in the twentieth century;
and women, industrially, live in the first —
and back of it.

^ To the same source we trace the social
and educational limitations set about women.
The dominant male, holding his women as
property, and fiercely jealous of them, con-
sidering them always as Ms, not belonging
to themselves, their children, or the world;
has hedged them in with restrictions of a
thousand sorts; physical, as in the crippled
Chinese lady or the imprisoned odalisque;
moral, as in the oppressive doctrines of sub-
mission taught by all our androcentric re-
ligions ; mental, as in the enforced ignorance
from which women are now so swiftly
emerging.

This abnormal restriction of women has
necessarily injured motherhood. The man,
free, growing in the world's growth, has
mounted with the centuries, filling an ever
wider range of world activities. The
woman, bound, has not so grown; and the
child is bom to a progressive fatherhood and
a stationary motherhood. Thus the man-
made family reacts unfavorably upon the

THE MAN-MADE FAMILY 39

child. We rob our children of half their
social heredity by keeping the mother in
an inferior position; however legalized, hal-
lowed, or ossified by time, the position of
domestic servant is inferior.

It is for this reason that child culture is
at so low a level, and for the most part ut-
terly unknown. To-day, when the forces of
education are steadily working nearer to the
cradle, a new sense is wakening of the im-
portance of the period of infancy, and its
wiser treatment ; yet those who know of such
a movement are few, and of them some are
content to earn easy praise — and pay — ^by
beUttKng right progress to gratify the preju-
dices of the ignorant.

The whole position is simple and clear;
and easily traceable to its root. Given a
propriety f «mly. where the aum hold,
the woman primarily for his satisfaction and
service — ^then necessarily he shuts her up
and keeps her for these purposes. Being so
kept, she cannot develop humanly, as he has,
through social contact, social service, true
social life. (We may note in passing, her
passionate fondness for the child-game

40 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

called "society" she has been allowed to en-
tertain herself withal; that poor simiacrum
of real social life, in which people decorate
themselves and madly crowd together, chat-
tering, for what is called "entertainment.")
Thus checked in social development, we have
but a low grade motherhood to offer our
children; and the children, reared in the
primitive conditions thus artificially main-
tained, enter life with a false perspective,
not only toward men and women, but toward
life as a whole.

The child should receive in the family, full
preparation for his relation to the world at
large. His whole life must be spent in the
world, serving it well or ill ; and youth is the
time to learn how. But the androcentric
home cannot teach him. We live to-day in
a democracy-r-the man-made family is a
despotism. It may be a weak one; the
despot may be dethroned and overmastered
by his little harem of one; but in that case
she becomes the despot — ^that- is all. The
male is esteemed "the head ofi the family";
it belongs to him; he maintains it; and the
rest of the world is a wide hitating ground

THE MAN-MADE FAMILY 41

and battlefield wherein he competes with
other males as of old.

The girl-child, peering out, sees this for-
bidden field as belonging wholly to men-
kind; and her relation to it is to secure one
for herself — ^not only that she may love, but
that she may live. He will feed, clothe and /
adorn her— she will serve him; from the sub- 1
jection of the daughter to that of the wife**
she steps; from one home to the other, and
never enters the world at all — ^man's world.

The boy, on the other hand, considers the
home as a place of women, an inferior place,
and longs to grow up and leave it — ^f or the
real world. He is quite right. The error
is that this great social instinct, calling for .
full social exercise, exchange, service, is con-
sidered masculine, whereas it is human, and
belongs to boy and girl alike.

The child is aflFected first through the re-
tarded development of his mother, the
through the arrested conditions of home in-
dustry; and further through the wrong
ideals which have arisen from these condi-
tions. A normal home, where there was hu-

i'

42 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

man equality between mother and father,
would have a better influence.

Wc must not overlook the eflFect of the
proprietary family on the proprietor him-
self.

He, too, has been held back somewhat
by this reactionary force. In the process of
becoming human we must learn to recognize
justice, freedom, human rights; we must
learn self-control and to think of others;
have minds that grow and broaden ration-
ally; we must learn the broad mutual inter-
service and unbounded joy of social inter-
course and service. The pretty' despot of
the man-made home is hindered in his hu-
manness by too much manness.

For each man to have one whole woman
to cook for and wait upon him is a poor
education for democracy. The boy with a
servile mother, the man with a servile wife,
cannot reach the sense of equal rights we
need to-day. Too constant consideration of
the master's tastes makes the master selfish ;
and the assault upon his heart direct, or
through that proverbial side-avenue, the
stomach, which the dependent woman needs

THE MAN-MADE FAMILY 43

must make when she wants anything, is bad
for the man, as well as for her.

We are slowly forming a nobler type of
family; the union of two, based on love and
recognized by law, maintained because of its
happiness and use. We are even now ap-
preaching a tenderness and permanence of
love, high pure enduring love; combined
with the broad deep-rooted friendliness and
comradeship of equals; which promises us
more happiness in marriage than we have
yet known. It will be good for all the par-
ties concerned — ^man, woman and child; and
promote our general social progress ad-
mirably.

If it needs "a head" it will elect a chair-
man pro tem. Friendship does not need
"a head/' Love does not need "a head."
Why should a family?

44 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

CHAPTER III

HEALTH AND BEAUTY

AMONG the many paradoxes which
we find in human life is om* low
average standard of health and
beauty, compared with om* power and
knowledge. All creatm*es suflFer from con-
flict with the elements; from enemies with-
out and within — ^the prowling devourers of
the forest, and "the terror that walketh in
darkness" and attacks the body from inside,
in hidden millions.

Among wild animals generally, there is a
certain standard of excellence; if you shoot
a bear or a bird it is a fair sample of the
species; you do not say, "O what an ugly
one!" or "This must have been an invalid!"

Where we have domesticated any animal,
and interfered with its natural habits, illness
has followed ; the dog is said to have the most

HEALTH AND BEAUTY 45

diseases second to man; the horse comes
next; but the wild ones put us to shame by
their superior health and the beauty that be-
longs to right development.

In our long ages of blind infancy we as-
sume that sickness was a visitation from the
gods; some still believe this, holding it to
be a special perogative of divinity to afilict
us in this way. We speak of "the ills that
flesh is heir to" as if the inheritance was en-
tailed and inalienable. Only of late years,
after much study and long struggle with this
old belief which made us submit to sickness
as a blow from the hand of God, we are be-
ginning to learn something of the many
causes of oiu* many diseases, and how to
remove some of them.

It is still true, however, that almost every
one of us is to some degree abnormal; the
features asymmetrical, the vision defective,
the digestion unreliable, the nervous system
erratic — ^we are but a job lot even in what
we call "good health"; and are subject to
a burden of pain and premature death that
would make life hideous if it were not so
ridiculously unnecessary.

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

^

As to beauty — we do not think of ex-
pecting it save in the rarely exceptional case.
Look at the faces — the figures — in any
crowd you meet; compare the average man
or the average woman with the normal type
of human beauty as given us in picture and
statue; and consider if there is not some
general cause for so general a condition of
ugliness.

Moreover, leaving our defective bodies
concealed by garments; what are those gar-
ments, as conducive to health and beauty?
Is the practical ugliness of our men's attire,
and the impractical absurdity of our wo-
men's, any contribution to human beauty?
Look at our houses — are they beautiful?
Even the houses of the rich?

We do not even know that we ought to
live in a world of overflowing loveliness; and
that our contribution to it should be the
loveliest of all. We are so sodden in the dull
ugliness of our interiors, so used to calling
a tame weary low-toned color scheme "good
taste," that only children dare frankly yearn
for Beauty — and they are speedily educated
out of it.

HEALTH AND BEAUTY 47

The reasons specially ^ven for our low
standards of health and beauty are ignor-
ance, poverty, and the evil eflFects of special
trades. The Man with the Hoe becomes
brother to the ox because of over-much hoe-
ing; the housepainter is lead-poisoned be-
cause of his painting ; books have been writ-
ten to show the injurious influence of nearly
all our industries upon workers.

These causes are sound as far as they go ;
but do not cover the whole ground.

The farmer may be muscle-bound and
stooping from his labor; but that does not
account for his dyspepsia or his rheumatism.

Then we allege poverty as covering all.
Poverty does cover a good deal. But when
we find even a half-fed savage better devel-
oped than a well paid cashier; and a poor
peasant woman a more vigorous mother than
the idle wife of a rich man, poverty is not
enough.

Then we say ignorance explains it. But
there are most learned professors who are
ugly and asthmathic; there are even doctors
who can boast no beauty and but moderate
health ; there are some of the petted children

48 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

of the wealthy, upon whom every care is
lavished from bu^h, and who stiU are iU to
look at and worse to marry.

All these special causes are admitted,
given their due share in lowering our
standards, but there is another far more uni-
versal in its application and its effects. Let
us look back on our little ancestors the
beasts, and see what keeps them so true to
type.

The type itself set by that balance of con-
ditions and forces we call "natural selection.'*
As the environment changes they must be
adapted to it, if they cannot so adapt them-
selves they die. Those who live are, by liv-
ing, proven capable of maintaining them-
selves. Every creature which has remained
on earth, while so many less eflFective kinds
die out, remains as a conqueror. The speed
of the deer — the constant use of speed — ^is
what keeps it alive and makes it healthy and
beautiful. The varied activities of the life
of a leopard are what have developed the
sinuous gracile strength we so admire. It
is what the creatm*e does for its living, its

HEALTH AND BEAUTY 49

daily life-long exercise which makes it what
it is.

But there is another great natural force
which works steadily to keep all animals up
to the "Face standard; that is sexual selection.
Throughout nature the male is the variant,
as we have already noted. His energy finds
vent not only in that profuse output of deco-
rative appendages Ward defines as "mascu-
line eflForescence" but in variations not deco-
rative, not useful or desirable at all.

The female, on the other hand, varies
much less, remaining nearer the race type;
and her function is to select among these
varying males the specimens most valuable
to the race. In the intense masculine com-
petition the victor must necessarily be
stronger than his fellows; he is first proven
equal to his environment by having hved to
grow up, then more than equal to his fellows
by overcoming them. This higher grade of
selection also develops not only the charac-
teristics necessary to make a living; but sec-
ondary ones, often of a purely aesthetic na-
ture, which make much of what we call
beauty. Between the two, all who live must

50 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

be up to a certain grade, and those who be-
come parents must be above it; a masterly
arrangement surely I

Here is where, during the period of our
human history, we in our newborn conscious-
ness and imperfect knowledge, have griev-
ously interfered with the laws of nature.
The ancient proprietary family, treating the
woman as a slave, keeping her a prisoner
and subject to the will of her master, cut
her off at once from the exercise of those
activities which alone develop and maintain
the race type.

Take the one simple quality of speed. We
are a creature built for speed, a free swift
graceful animal; and among savages this is
still seen — the capacity for running, mile
after mile, hour after hour. Running is as
natural a gait for genus homo as for genus
cervus. Now suppose among deer, the doe
was prohibited from nmning; the stag con-
tinuing free on the mountain; the doe living
in caves and pens, unequal to any exercise.
The eifect on the species would be, in-
evitably, to reduce its speed.

In this way, by keeping women to one

HEALTH AND BEAUTY 51

small range of duties, and in most cases
housebomid, we have interfered with natm'al
selection and its resultant health and beauty.
It can easily be seen what the eflFect on the
race would have been if all men had been
veiled and swathed, hidden in harems, kept
to the tent or house, and confined to the ac-
tivities of a house-servant. Our stalwart la-
borers, oiu* proud soldiers, our athletes,
would never have appeared under such cir-
cumstances. The confinement to the house
alone, cutting women oflF from sunshine and
air, is by itself an injury; and the range of
occupation allowed them is not such as to
develop a Mgh standard of either health or
beauty. Thus we have cut oflF half the race
from the strengthening influence of natural
selection, and so lowered our race standards
in large degree.

This alone, however, would not have had
such mischievous eflFects but for our further
blunder in completely reversing nature's or-
der of sexual selection. It is quite possible
that even under confinement and restriction
women could have kept up the race level,
passably, through this great function of se-

52 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

lection; but here is the great fundamental
error of the Androcentric Culture. Assum-
ing to be the possessor of women, their
owner and master, able at will to give, buy
and sell, or do with as he pleases, man
became the selector.

It seems a simple change; and in those
early days, wholly ignorant of natural laws,
there was no suspicion that any mischief
would result. In the light of modem knowl-
edge, however, the case is clear. The woman
was deprived of the beneficent action of
natural selection, and the man was then, by
his own act freed from the stem but ele-
vating eflFect of sexual selection. Nothing
was required of the woman by natural se-
lection save such capacity as should please
her master ; nothing was required of the man
by sexual selection save power to take by
force, or buy, a woman.

It does not take a very high standard of
feminine intelligence, strength, skill, health,
or beauty to be a houseservant, or even a
housekeeper; witness the average.

It does not take a very high standard of
masculine intelligence, strength, skill, health

HEALTH AND BEAUTY 53

or beauty to maintain a woman in that ca-
pacity — ^witness the average.

Here at the very root of our physiological
process, at the beginning of life, we have
perverted the order of nature, and are suf-
fering the consequences.

It has been held by some that man as the
selector has developed beauty, more beauty
than we had before; and we point to the
charms of our women as compared with
those of the squaw. The first answer to this
is that the squaw belongs to a decadent race ;
that she too is subject to the man, that the
comparison to have weight should be made
between our women and the women of the
matriarchate — ^an obvious impossibility. We
have not on earth women in a state of nor-
mal freedom and full development; but we
have enough diflFerence in their placing to
learn that hirnian strength and beauty
grows with woman's freedom and activity.

The second answer is that much of what
man calls beauty in woman is not human
beauty at all, but gross overdevelopment of
certain points which appeal to him as a male.
The excessive fatness, previously referred

54 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

to, is a case in point; that being considered
beauty in a woman wbich is in reality an
element of weakness, inefficiency and ill-
health. The relatively small size of women,
deliberately preferred, steadfastly chosen,
and so built into the race, is a blow at real
human progress in every particular. In our
upward journey we should and do grow
larger, leaving far behind us our dwarfish
progenitors. Yet the male, in his unnatural
position as selector, preferring for reasons
both practical and sentimental, to have "his
woman" smaller than himself, has deliber-
ately striven to lower the standard of size
in the race. We used to read in the novels
of the last generation, "He was a magnifi-
cent specimen of manhood" — "Her golden
head reached scarcely to his shoulder" —
"She was a fairy creature — the tiniest of her
sex." Thus we have mated, and yet ex-
pected that by some hocus pocus the boys
would all "take after their father," and the
girls, their mother. In his efforts to im-
prove the breed of other animals, man has
never tried to deUberately cross the large

I
I

HEALTH AND BEAUTY 55

and small and expect to keep up the
standard of size.

As a male he is appealed to by the ultra-
feminine, and has given small thought to
effects on the race. He was not designed to
do the selecting. Under his fostering care
we have bred a race of women who are
physically weak enough to be handed about
like invalids; or mentally weak enough to
pretend they are — ^and to like it. We have
made women who respond so perfectly to
the force which made them, that they attach
all their idea of beauty to those characteris-
tics which attract men; sometimes humanly
ugly witiiout even knowing it.

For instance, our long restriction to
house-limits, the heavy limitations of our
clothing, and the heavier ones of traditional
decorum, have made women disproportion-
ately short-legged. This is a particularly
undignified and injurious characteristic,
bred^ women and inherited by men, most
seen among those races which keep their
women most closely. Yet when one woman
escapes the tendency and appears with a
normal length of femur and tibia, a normal

56 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

height of hip and shoulder, she is criticized
and called awkward by her squatty sisters!

The most convenient proof of the inferior-
ity of women in human beauty is shown by
those composite statues prepared by Dr.
Sargent for the World's Fair of '93. These
were made from gymnasiimi measm*ements
of thousands of young collegians of both
sexes all over America. The statue of the
girl has a pretty face, small hands and feet,
rather nice arms, though weak; but the legs
are too thick and short; the chest and
shoulders poor; and the trunk is quite piti-
ful in its weakness. The figure of the man
is much better proportioned.

Thus the eflFect on human beauty of mas-
culine selection.

Beyond this positive deteriorative eflFect
on women through man's arbitrary choice
comes the negative eflFect of woman's lack
of choice. Bought or stolen or given by her
father, she was deprived of the innately
feminine right and duty of choosing. "Who
giveth this woman?" we still inquire in om*
archaic marriage service, and one man steps
forward and gives her to another man.

HEALTH AND BEAUTY 57

Free, the female chose the victor, and the
vanquished went unmated — ^and without
progeny. Dependent, having to be fed and
cared for by some man, the victors take
their pick perhaps, but the vanquished take
what is left; and the poor women, "marry-
ing for a home," take anything. As a con-
sequence the inferior male is as free to trans-
mit his inferiority as the superior to give
better qualities, and does so — ^beyond com-
putation. In modern days, women are
freer, in some countries freer than in others ;
here in modem America freest of all; and
the result is seen in our improving standards
of health and beauty.

Still there remains the field of inter-mas-
culine competition, does there not? Do not
the males still struggle together? Is not
that as of old, a source of race advantage?

To some degree it is. When Ufe was sim-
pie and our activities consisted mainly in
fighting and hard work; the male who could
vanquish the others wm higger and stronger.
But inter-masculine competition ceases to be
of such advantage when we enter the field
of social service. What is required in or-

I

58 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

fl^anized society is the specialization of the
individual, the development of special tal-
ents, not always of immediate benefit to the
man himself, but of ultimate benefit to so-
ciety. The best sodal servant, progressive,
meeting future needs, is almost always at a
diNmivantage beside the well-established
lower types. We need, for social service,
qualities quite different from the simple
mtt«<fuline characteristics — desire, combat,
«elf-exprcHsion.

Wy keeping what we call "the outside
worhl" so wholly male, we keep up mascu-
Yww HlimdanlN at the expense of human ones.
'V\\\H may be broadly seen in the slow and
painful (levolopment of industry and sci-
(*Hro HN compared to the easy dominance of
wjirfiire tliroughout all history until our own

lillU'N.

Tlir f ITool of all this ultra masculine com-
petition upon health and beauty is but too
plainly to bo seen. Among men the male
idea of what is gtHxl l(X)king is accentuated
beyond rciiNon. Head aliout any "hero*' you
please; or »ludy the products of the illus-
trator and note the broad shoulders, the

HEALTH AND BEAUTY 59

rugged features, the strong, square de-
tennined jaw. That jaw is in evidence if
everything else fails. He may be cross-eyed,
wide-eared, thick-necked, bandy-legged —
what you please; but he must have a more
or less prognathous jaw.

Meanwhile any anthropologist wiU show
you that the line of human development is
away from that feature of the bulldog and
the alligator, and toward the measured dig-
nity of the Greek type. The possession of
that kind of jaw may enable male to con-
quer male, but does not make him of any
more service to society; of any better health
or higher beauty.

Further, in the external decoration of our
bodies, what is the influence here of mascu-
line dominance.

We have before spoken of the peculiar
position of our race in that the woman is the
only female creature who carries the burden
of sex ornament. This amazing reversal of
the order of nature results at its mildest in
a perversipn of the natural feminine in-
stincts of love and service, and an appear-
ance of the masculine instincts of self -ex-

60 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

jftpression and display. Alone among all fe-
male things do women decorate and preen
themselves and exhibit their borrowed
plmnage (literally!) to attract the favor of
the male. This ignominy is forced upon
^^ them by their position of economic depend-

j ence; and their general helplessness. As
all broader life is made to depend, for them,
on whom they marry, indeed as even the ne-
cessities of life so often depend on their
marrying someone, they have been driven
into this form of competition, so alien to the
true female attitude.

The result is enough to make angels weep
— and laugh. Perhaps no step in the evolu-
tion of beauty went farther than our human
power of making a continuous fabric; soft
and mobile, showing any color and texture
desired. The beauty of the human body is
supreme, and when we add to it the flow of
color, the ripple of fluent motion, that comes
of a soft, Ught garment over free limbs —
it is a new field of loveliness and delight.
Naturally this should have filled the whole
world with a new pleasure. Our garments,
first under right natural selection develop-

HEALTH AND BEAUTY 61

ing perfect use, under right sex selection de-
veloping beauty; and further, as our human
aesthetic sense progresses, showing a noble
symbolism; would have been an added
strength and glory, a ceaseless joy.

What is the case?

Men, under a too strictly inter-masculine
environment, have evolved the mainly useful
but beautiless costume common to-day; and
women — ?

Women wear beautiful garments when
they happen to be the fashion; and ugly
garments when they are the fashion, and
show no signs of knowing the difference.
They show no added pride in the beautiful,
no hint of mortification in the hideous, and
are not even sensitive under criticism, or
open to any persuasion or argument. Why
should they be?

Their condition, physical and mental, is
largely abnormal, their whole passionate ab-
sorption in dress and decoration is abnormal,
and they have never looked, from a frankly
human standpoint, at their position and its
peculiarities, until the present age.

In the effect of our wrong relation on the

62 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

world's health, we have spoken of the check
to vigor and growth due to the housebound
state of women and their burdensome
clothes. There follow other influences,
similar in origin, even more evil in result.
To roughly and briefly classify we may dis-
tinguish the diseases due to bad air, to bad
food, and that field of cruel mischief we are
only now beginning to discuss — ^the diseases
^ directly due to the erroneous relation be-
ll tween men and women.

We are the only race where the female
I depends on the male for a livelihood. We
' are the only race that practices prostitution.
From the first harmless-looking but ab-
normal general relation, follows the well
recognized evil of the second, so long called
"a social necessity," and from it, in deadly
sequence, comes the "wages of sin"; death
not only of the guilty, but of the innocent.
It is no light part of our criticism of the
Androcentric Culture that a society based
on masculine desires alone, has willingly sac-
rificed such an army of women ; and has re-
paid the sacrifice by the heaviest punish-
ments.

HEALTH AND BEAUTY 63

That the unfortunate woman should
sicken and die was held to be her just pun-
ishment; that man too should bear part pen-
alty was found unavoidable, though much
legislation and medical eflFort has been spent
to shield him; but to the further conse-
quences society is but now waking up.

Sheltered by the customs and sanctions
of a civilization built and upheld by his own
sex, man has brought home to his helpless
and innocent family the "wages of sin" —
and paid them out most heavily. We are
now beginning to learn what a percentage of
blindness, of epilepsy, of many horrible
forms of illness, idiocy and deformity, of
sterility, of babies never born alive, or
dying in their cradles; and of the ruined
health of wives, their subjection to surgical
operation, their wretched lives:— is due to
this terribly frequent offence. When a more
human or less masculine standard of living
is at last reached, we shall see these matters
in their true light. The present purpose is
not to pile up horrors, nor to give technical
details; but to point out that this enormous

64 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

share of disease and degeneracy is directly
traceable to our Androcentric Culture.

It is inconceivable that a civilization even
half representing women, could so sin
against Mother and Child; so poison the
current of life at its very springs.

No heavier single charge can be brought
against a civilization in which women are
dependent upon men than this; that, man,
the "natural protector," has not only
doomed to misery and ruin so large a num-
ber of the protected; blamed and pimished
in them what he did not blame and punish in
himself; then blamed their more fortunate
sisters for this cruel judgment; and, above
all, brought to the innocent and trusting
wife and. the helpless child, the penalty of
his misdeeds.

Much less impressive, but more wide
spread are the other two lines in which our
health is injured by this too masculine
order. Modem therapeutics is now learn-
ing how many of our disorders of the throat
and lungs may be generally classified as
^ "house-diseases.** Certaip bacteria flourish
ceaselessly in the dusty heat of our houses.

HEALTH AND BEAUTY 65

The more people are shut up and used to
breathing impoverished air, the less able
are they to meet natural temperatures. We
become acclimated to bad air, as it were, and
do not' object, in church, car, theatre,
crowded store, to the same atmosphere we
are used to in our houses. Against the house
habit strives the new knowledge of hygienist
and physician, but the habit is older and
wider than the knowledge, and we as a
people submit our lungs to a degree of foul-
ness, which were it oflFered in food, we should
repudiate with horror.

Now women are not naturally cave
dwellers any more than men. They have
been confined to the house for reasons
quite outside the needs of motherhood. Only
to-day, within a lifetime, are we at last re-
learning what a free outdoor life can do for
the girl as well as the boy, a lesson lost since
Sparta fell. The woman should compare
in size and vigor with the man as the lioness
with the lion, or the migrating mother stork
with her mate. A house life is not good for ;
man, woman, or child; her enforced hmita- j
tions react on him and on their little ones. *

66 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

Among all the varied unpleasantnesses
known to the doctor, he makes least prog-
ress in opposing what are known as '-food
diseases/' We suffer enough in many ways ;
, but our difficulties with "'the alimentary
j- tract" are most common and least cured.
Wise, strong, highly civilized are we, rich
powerful, somewhat educated, yet from the
slowly departing teeth to the rapidly re-
moved appendix we seem helplessly open
to disease. Whatever else we have learned
in our long ascent, we have not learned what,
where and how to eat.

It is most singular.

No other animal has such difficulty (ex-
cept to some degree the ones we feed) . To-
day we are bringing more knowledge to bear
on this subject, we are trying to teach bet-
ter food habits, but we do not recognize the
constant universal cause of the trouble,
which is simply this ; that every man has one
whole woman to cook for him. If he can
afford it, he has more than one. **The way
to a man's heart is his stomach," we are told ;
and he has for so long confounded the two

HEALTH AND BEAUTY 67

that the words "Wife" and "Cook'' are afi
most synonjrmous to him. ^

The dependent woman has this business
of cooking as the one main way in which to
show her love, to fulfill her service; and —
alas! secure any special concessions she de-
sires.

"Tell me the secret of married happi-
ness!" says the blooming bride-to-be to the
sweet-faced grandmother. And that placid
dame replies with imexpected fervor,
"Feed the brute!"

The point here suggested is that this
method of feeding is not good for us. It is
not healthy to have a loving servant always
ministering to one's desires. Less devotion
and more knowledge, less aflFection and a y
higher grade of skiU, are needed in this great
business of feeding the world. We cater to
the appetite continuously. We know what
John likes ; but we do not know in the least
what the various chemicals we daily present
to him do to his unhappy inside. Neither
do we realize that this constant ministering
service to the personal desires of men in the
home is responsible, to a terrible extent, for

68 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

their helpless self-indulgence in the world
outside. The psychic eflFect of "Mother's
cooking" is a thing we have not considered.
No art, no science, no business, can grow
far when kept to a domestic level, when
the product of labor is for one person only,
and is governed not by knowledge but by
desire. The wife-servant, ministering de-
votedly to her lord, has not served his best
interests. A relation that is wrong at its
base cannot work out right in any line.

The health of the world is not ensured by
making women the servants of men.

To-day the human woman and the human
man are alike able to discuss transmitting
deformity and disease to their beloved ones.
A new moral sense is called for here, and is
slowly appearing among us. A moral sense
that shall rate the mother's responsibilty in
selecting the father of her children, and in
securing to them a pure inheritance in con-
stitution, far higher than the preservation
of the hush-and-cover policy of our racial
beginnings.

Further than that we need a new judg-
ment upon the offenders in this case; not

HEALTH AND BEAUTY 69

merely as breakers of our present moral
law, not merely as oflFenders against our
social canons — an oflFense so light and fre-
quent as to meet small rebuke; but as plain
criminals, chargeable with poisoning, may-
hem and murder.

If a man gives his wife arsenic, he is held
criminally responsible ; if he shoots his child,
or maims him with an axe. Wherein is a
man less guilty who knowingly transmits
disease to a trusting wife, who causes blind-
ness and deformity and idiocy in his chil-
dren, whose lightest oflFense is to bring ster-
ility and merciful death?

70 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

CHAPTER IV

MEN AND ABT

AMONG the many counts in which
women have been proven inferior
to men in hmnan development is
the oft-heard charge that there are no great
women artists. Where one or two are
proudly exhibited in evidence, they are
either pooh-poohed as not very great, or
held to be the trifling exceptions which do
but prove the rule.

Defenders of women generally make the
mistake of over-estimating their perform-
ances, instead of accepting, and explaining,
the visible facts. What are the facts as to
the relation of men and women to art? And
what, in especial, has been the eflFect upon
art of a solely masculine expression?

When we look for the beginnings of art.

MEN AND ART 71

we find ourselves in a period of crude deco-
ration of the person and of personal be-
longings. Tattooing, for instance, is an
early form of decorative art, still in practice
among certain classes, even in advanced
people. Most boys, if they are in contact
with this early art, admire it, and wish to
adorn themselves therewith; some do it, too,
to later mortification. Early personal
decoration consisted largely in direct muti-
lation of the body, and the hanging upon it,
or fastening to it, of decorative objects.
This we see among savages still, in its gross
and primitive forms monopolized by men,
then shared by women, and, in our time, left
almost wholly to them. In personal decora-
tion, to-day, women are still near the savage.
The "artists" developed in this field of art
are the tonsorial, the sartorial, and all those
specialized adomers of the body commonly
Imown as "beauty doctors."

Here, as in other cases, the greatest artists
are men. The greatest milliners, the great-
est dressmakers and tailors, the greatest
hairdressers, and the masters and designers
in all our decorative toHettes and acces-

72 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

series, are men. Women, in this as in so
many other lines, consume rather than pro-
duce. They carry the major part of per-
sonal decoration to-day; but the decorator
is the man. In the decoration of objects,
woman, as the originator of primitive indus-
try, originated also the primitive arts; and
in the pottery, basketry, leatherwork, needle-
work, weaving, with all beadwork, dyeing,
and embroideries of ancient peoples, we see
the work of the woman decorator. Much of
this is strong and beautiful, but its time is
long past. The art which is part of indus-
try, natural, simple, spontaneous, making
beauty in every object of use, adding pleas-
ure to labor and to life, is not Art with a
large A, the Art which requires Artists,
among whom are so few women of note.

Art as a profession, and the Artist as a
professional, came later; and by that time
women had left the freedom and power of
the matriarchate and become slaves in vary-
ing degree. The women who were idle pets
in harems, or the women who worked hard
as servants, were alike cut oflF from the joy
of making things. Where constructive work

MEN AND ART 73

remained to them, art remained, in its early
decorative form. Men, in the proprietary
family, restricting the natural industry of
women to personal service, cut off their art
with their industry, and by so much impov-
erished the world.

There is no more conspicuously pathetic^
proof of the aborted development of woman
than this commonplace — ^their lack of a civ-
ilized art sense. Not only in the childish and
savage display upon their bodies, but in the!
pitiful products they hang upon the walls!
of the home, is seen the arrest in normall
growth. -^

After ages of culture, in which men have
developed Architecture, Sculpture, Paint-
ing, Music and the Drama, we find women
in their primitive environment making
flowers of wax, and hair, and worsted, doing
mottoes of perforated cardboard, making
crazy quilts and mats and "tidies" — ^as if
they lived in a long past age, or belonged to
a lower race.

This, as part of the general injury to
women dating from the beginning of our
androcentric cultm^e, reacts heavily upon the

74 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

world at large. Men, specializing, giving
their lives to the continuous pursuit of one
line of service, have lifted our standard in
aesthetic culture, as they have in other mat-
ters; but by refusing the same growth to
women, they have not only weakened and
reduced the output, but ruined the market
as it were, hopelessly and permanently kept
down the level of taste.

Among the many sides of this great ques-
tion, some so terrible, some so pathetic, some
so utterly absurd, this particular phase of
life is especially easy to study and under-
stand, and has its own elements of amuse-
ment. Men, holding women at the level of
domestic service, going on themselves to
lonely heights of achievement, have found
their efforts hampered and their attainments
rendered barren and unsatisfactory by the
amazing indifference of the world at large.
As the world at large consists half of
women, and wholly of their children, it
would seem patent to the meanest under-
standing that the women must be allowed
to rise in order to lift the world. But such
has not been the method — theretofore.

MEN AND ART 75

We have spoken so far in this chapter of
the eflFect of men on art through their
interference with the human growth of
women. There are other sides to the ques-
tion. Let us consider once more the essen-
tial characteristics of maleness, and see how
they have effected art, keeping always in
mind the triple distinction between mas-
culine, feminine and human. Perhaps we
shall best see this difference by considering
what the development of art might have
been on purely himian lines.

The human creature, as such, naturally
delights in construction, and adds decora-
tion to construction as naturally. The cook,
making little regular patterns round the
edge of the pie, does so from a purely himian
instinct, the innate eye-pleasure in regular-
ity, symmetry, repetition, and alternation.
Had this natiu*al social instinct grown
unchecked in us, it would have manifested
itself in a certain proportion of specialists —
artists of all sorts — ^and an accompanying
development of appreciation on the part of
the rest of us. Such is the case in primitive
art; the maker of beauty is upheld and

76 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

rewarded by a popular appreciation of her
work — or his.

Had this condition remained, we should
find a general level of artistic expression
and appreciation far higher than we see
now. Take the one field of textile art, for
instance, that wide and fiuent medium of
expression, the making of varied fabrics,
the fashioning of garments and the decora-
tion of them — all this is human work and
human pleasure. It should have led us to a
condition where every himian being was a
pleasure to the eye, appropriately and
beautifully clothed.

Our real condition in this field is too
patent to need emphasis; the stiff, black
ugliness of our men's attire, the irritating
variegated folly of our women's, the way in
which we spoil the beauty and shame the
dignity of childhood by modes of dress.

In normal human growth, our houses
would be a pleasure to the eye ; our furniture
and utensils, all our social products, would
blossom into beauty as naturally as they still
do in those low stages of social evolution

MEN AND ART 117

where our major errors have not yet borne
full fruit.

AgT^iied art in all its forms is a himian
function, common to every one to some
degree, either in production or apprecia-
tion or both. "Pure art,*' as an ideal, is also
himian; and the single-hearted devotion of
the true artist to this ideal is one of the high-
est forms of the social sacrifice. Of all the
thousand ways by which humanity is spe-
cialized for inter-service, none is more exqui-
site than this; the evolution of the social
Eye, or Ear, or Voice, the development of
those whose work is wholly for others, and
to whom the appreciation of others is as
the bread of life. This we should have in a\
properly developed community; the pleas- 1
ure of applied art in the making and using I
of everything we have, and then the high!
joy of the Great Artist, and the noble work]
thereof, spread far and wide.

What do we find?

Applied art at a very low level, small joy
either for the maker or the user. Pure art,
a fine-spun specialty, a process carried on
by an elect few, who openly despise the

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

unappreciative many. Art has become an
occult profession requiring a long special
education even to enjoy, and evolving a
j argon of criticism which becomes more
esoteric yearly.

Let IIS now see what part in this unde-
sirable outcome is due to our Androcentric
Culture.

As soon as the male of our species
assumed the exclusive right to perform all
social functions, he necessarily brought to
that performance the advantages — and dis-
advantages — of maleness, of those dominant
characteristics, desire, combat, self-expres-
sion.

Desire has overweighted art in many visi-
ble forms, it is prominent in painting and
music, almost monopolizes fiction, and has
pitifully degraded dancing.

Combat is not so easily expressed in art,
where even competition is on a high plane;
but the last element is the main evil, self-
expression. This impulse is inherently and
ineradicably masculine. It rests on that
most basic of distinctions between the sexes,
the centripetal and centrifugal forces of

MEN AND ART 79

the universe. In the very nature of the
sperm-cell and the germ-cell we find this
difference : the one attracts, gathers, draws
in; the other repels, scatters, pushes out.
That projective impulse is seen in the male
nature everywhere, the constant urge
toward expression, to all boasting and dis-
play. This spirit, like all things masculine,
is perfectly right and admirable in its place.

It is the duty of the male, as a male, to
vary ; bursting forth in a thousand changing
modifications — ^the female, selecting, may so
incorporate beneficial changes in the race. It
is his duty to thus express himself — an essen-
tially masculine duty; but masculinity is one
thing, and art is another. Neither the mas^
culine nor the feminine has any place in art/
-Artis Human. ^^ J

It is not in any faintest degree allied to
the persOTial process of reproduction; but is
a social process, a most distinctive social
process, quite above the plane of sex. The
true artist transcends his sex, or her sex. If
this is not the case, the art suffers.

Dancing is an early, and a beautiful art;
direct expression of emotion through the

THE MAN'MADE WORLD

I

body; beginning in sub-human type, among
male birds, as the bower-btrd of New
Guinea, and the dancing crane, who swing
and caper before their mates. Among early
peoples we find it a common form of social
expression in tribal dances of all sorts,
reli^ous, military, and other. Later it be-
comes a more exphcit form of celebration,
as among the Greeks; in whose exquisite
personal culture dancing and music held
high place.

But imder the progressive efforts of
purely masculine dominance we find the
broader human elements of dancing left out,
and the sex-element more and more empha-
sized. As practiced by men alone dancing
has become a mere disj)lay of physical
agility, a form of exhibition common to all
males. As practiced by men and women
together we have our social dances, so lack-
ing in all the varied beauty of posture and
expression, so steadily becoming a pleasant
form of dalliance.

As practiced by women alone we have one
of the clearest proofs of the degrading effect
of masculine dominance — the dancing girl.

MEN AND ART 81

In the frank sensualism of the Orient, this
personage is admired and enjoyed on her
merits. We, more sophisticated in this
matter, joke shamefacedly about "the bald-
headed row," and occasionally burst forth in
shrill scandal over some dinner party where
a lady clad in a veil and a bracelet dances on
the table. Nowhere else in the whole range
of life on earth, is this degradation found —
the female capering and prancing before the
male. It is absolutely and essentially his.
function, not hers. That we, as a race, pre-
sent this pitiful spectacle, a natural art
wrested to unnatural ends, a noble art
degraded to ignoble ends, has one clear
cause.

Architectiu'e, in its own nature, is leasl
affected by that same cause. The human
needs secured by it, are so human, so unes-\
capably human, that we find less trace of
excessive masculinity than in other arts. It^
meets our social demands, it expresses in
lasting form our social feeling, up to the
highest; and it has been injured not so much
by an excess of masculinity as by a lack of
femininity.

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

The most universal architectural expres-
sion is in the home; the home is essentially a
place for the woman and the child, yet the
needs of woman and child are not expressed
in our domestic architecture. The home is
built on lines of ancient precedent, mainly
as an industrial form ; the kitchen is its work-
ing centre rather than the nursery.

Each man wishes his home to preserve and
wlude his woman, liis Httle harem of one;
ind in it she is to labor for his comfort or
"to manifest his ability to maintain her in
idleness. The house is the physical expres-
sion of the limitations of women; and as
such it fills the world with a small drab ugli-
ness. A dwelling house is rarely a beauti-
ful object. In order to be such, it shoiild
truly express simple and natural relations;
or grow in larger beauty as our lives develop.

The deadlock for architectural progress,
the low level of our general taste, the ever-
lasting predominance of the commonplace
in buildings, is the natural result of the pro-
prietary family and its expression in this
form.

In sculpture we have a noble art forcing

MEN AND ART 83

itself into some service through many
limitations. Its check, as far, as it comes
imder this line of study, has been indicated
in our last chapter; the degradation of the
human body, the vicious standards of sex-
consciousness enforced under the name of
modesty, the covered ugliness which we do
not recognize, all this is a deadly injury to
free high work in sculpture.

With a nobly equal womanhood, stalwart
and athletic, with the high standards of
beauty and of decorum which we can never
have without free womanhood, we should
show a different product in this great art.

An interesting note in passing is this:
When we seek to express sculpturally our
noblest ideas. Truth, Justice, Liberty, we
use the woman's body as the highest human
type. But in doing this, the artist, true to
humanity and not biased by sex, gives us a
strong, grand figure, beautiful indeed, but
never decorated. Fancy Liberty in ruffles
and frills, with rings in her ears — or nose.

Music is injured by a one-side handling,
partly in the excess of the one dominant
masculine passion, partly by the general

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

presence of egoism, that tendency to self-
' expression instead of social expression,
which so disfigures our art; and this is true
also of poetry.

Miles and miles of poetry consist of the
ceaseless outcry of the male for the female,
which is by no means so overwlielming a
feature of human life as he imagines it ; and
other miles express his other feelings, with
that ingenious lack of reticence which is at
its base essentially masculine. Having a
pain, the poet must needs pour it forth, that
his woe be shared and sympathized with.

As more and more women writers flock
into the field, there is room for "fine historic
study of the difference in sex feeling, and
the gradual emergence of the human note.

Literature, and in especial the art of
fiction, is so large a field for this study that
it will have a chapter to itself; this one but
touching on these various forms, and indi-
cating lines of observation.

That best known form of art which to
the lay mind needs no qualifying descrip-
tion—painting — is also a wide field; and
cannot be done full justice to within these

MEN AND ART 85

limits. The effect upon it of too much mas^
culinity is not so much in choice of subject/
as in method and spirit. The artist sees'
beauty of form and color where the ordin-
ary observer does not; and paints the old
and ugly with as much enthusiasm as the
young and beautiful — ^sometimes. If there
is in some an over-emphasis of feminine
attractions it is counterbalanced in others by
a far broader line of work.

But the main evils of a too masculine art
lie in the emphasis laid on the self-expres-
sion. The artist, passionately conscious of
how he feels, strives to make other people
aware of these sensations. This is now so
generally accepted by critics, so seriously
advanced by painters, that what is called
"the art world" accepts it as established.

If a man paints the sea, it is not to make
you see and feel as a sight of that same
ocean would, but to make you see and feel
how he, personally, was affected by it; a
matter surely of the narrowest importance.
The ultra-masculine artist, extremely sen-
sitive, necessarily, and full of the natural
urge to expression of the sex, uses the

86 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

medium of art as ingenuously as the part-
ridge-cock uses his wings in drumming on
the log, or the bull moose stamps and
bellows; not narrowly as a mate call, but as
a form of expression of his personal sensa-
tions.

The higher the artist the more human he
is, the broader his vision, the more he sees
for humanity, and expresses for himianity,
and the less personal, the less ultra-mas-
culine, is his expression.

MASCULINE LITERATURE 87

CHAPTER V

MASCULINE LITERATURE

WHEN we are oflFered a "woman's"
paper, page, or column, we find
it filled with matter supposed to
appeal to women as a sex or class ; the writer
mainly dwelling upon the Kaiser's four K's
Kuchen, Kinder, Kirche, Kleider. They
iterate and reiterate endlessly the discussion
of cookery old and new, of the care of chil-
dren, of the overwhelming subject of cloth-
ing, and of moral instruction. All this is
recognized as "feminine" literature, and it
must have some appeal, else the women
would not read it. What parallel have we
in "masculine" literature?

"None I" is the proud reply. "Men arev
people 1 Women, being Hhe sex,' have their \
limited feminine interests, their feminine j
point of view, which must be provided for. |

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

Men, however, are not restricted — to them
belongs the world's Kteraturel"

Yes, it has belonged to them — ever since
there was any. They have written it and
they have read it. It is only lately that
women, generally speaking, have been
taught to read; still more lately that they
have been allowed to write. It is but a little
while since Harriet Martineau concealed
her writing beneath her sewing when visi-
tors came in — writing was "masculine" —
sewing, "feminine."

We have not, it is true, confined men to
a narrowly constructed "masculine sphere,"
and composed a special literature suited to
it. Their effect on literature has been
far wider than that, monopolizing this form
of art with special favor. It was suited
above all others to the dominant impulse of
self-expression, and being, as we have seen,
essentially and continuaUy "the sex;" they
have impressed that sex upon this art over-
whelmingly; they have given the world a
mascuUzed literature.

It is hard for us to reahze this. We can
readily see, that if women had always written

MASCULINE LITERATURE 89

the books, no men either writing or reading
them, that would have surely "feminized"
our literature ; but we have not in our minds
the concept, much less the word, for an over-
masculized influence.

Men having been, accepted as humanity^,
women but a side-issue ; (most literally if we
accept the Hebrew legend!), whatever men
did or said was human — ^and not to be criti-
cized. In no department of life is it easier
to controvert this old belief ; to show how the
male sex as such differs from the human
type; and how this maleness has monopo-
lized and disfigured a great social function.

Human life is a very large affair; and
literature is its chief art. We live, humanly,
only through our power of communication.
Speech gives us this power laterally, as it
were, in immediate personal contact. For
permanent use speech becomes oral tra-
dition — a poor dependence. Literature
gives not only an infinite multiplication to
the lateral spread of communion but adds
the vertical reach. Through it we know the
past, govern the present, and influence the
future. In its serviceable common forms it

90 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

is the indispensable daily servant of our
lives ; in its nobler flights as a great art no
means of human inter-change goes so far.

In these brief limits we can touch but
lightly on some phases of so great a sub-
ject, and will rest the case mainly on the
effect of an exclusively masculine handling
of the two fields of history and fiction. In
poetry and the drama the same infiuence is
easily traced, but in the first two it is so
baldly prominent as to defy objection.

History is, or should be, the story of our

I'' racial life. What have men made it? The
[ story of warfare and conquest. Begin at
the very beginning with the carven stones
of Egypt, the clay records of Chaldea, what
do we find of history?

"I, Pharaoh, King of Kings! Lord of
Lords 1" {etc. etc.), "went down into the
miserable land of Kush, and slew of the
inhabitants thereof an hundred and forty
and two thousands!" That, or something
like it, is the kind of record early history
gives us.

The story of Conquering Kings, whom
and how many they killed and enslaved, the

MASCULINE LITERATURE 91

grovelling adulation of the abased, the
unlimited jubilation of the victor, from the
primitive state of most ancient kings, and
the Roman triumphs where queens walked
in chains, down to our omnipresent soldier's
monuments; the story of war and conquest
— ^war and conquest — over and over, with
such boasting and triumph, such cock-crow
and flapping of wings as show most unmis-
takably the natural source.

All this will strike the reader at first as
biased and unfair. "That was the way
people lived in those days!" says the reader.

No — it was not the way women hved.

"Oh, women!" says the reader, "Of course
not! Women are diflFerent."

Yes, women are different; and men are
different! Both of them, as sexes, differ j
from the human norm, which is social life 1
and all social development. Society was*/
slowly growing in all those black, bUnd
years. The arts, the sciences, the trades and
crafts and professions, religion, philosophy,
government, law, commerce, agriculture-
all the human processes were going on as
well as they were able, between wars.

THE MAN-MADE IVORLD

The male naturally fights, and naturally
crows, triumphs over his rival and takes the
prize — therefore was he made male. Male-
ness means war.

Not only so; but as a male, he cares only
for male interests. Men, being the sole
arbiters of what should be done and said
and written, have ^ven us not only a social
growth scarred and thwarted from the be-
ginning by continual destruction ; but a his-
tory which is one unbroken record of
courage and red cruelty, of triumph and
black shame.

As to what went on that was of real con-
sequence, the great slow steps of the work-
ing world, the discoveries and inventions,
the real progress of humanity— that was not
worth recording, from a mascuhiie point of
view. Within this last century, "the
^woman's century," the century of the great
awakening, the rising demand for freedom,
political, economic, and domestic, we are
beginning to write real history, human his-
tory, and not merely masculine history. But
that great branch of Uterature — Hebrew,
Greek, Roman, and all down later times.

MASCULINE LITERATURE 93

shows beyond all question, the influence of
our androcentric culture.

Literature is the most powerful and neces-
sary of the arts, and fiction is its broadest
form. If art "holds the mirror up to
nature" this art's mirror is the largest of all,
the most used. Since oiu* very life depends
on some communication, and our prog-
ress is in proportion to our fullness and
freedom of communication, since real com-
munication requires mutual understanding;
so in the growth of the social consciousness,
we note from the beginning a passionate
interest in other people's lives.

The art which gives humanity conscious-
ness is the most vital art. Our greatest
dramatists are lauded for their breadth of
knowledge of "human nature," their range
of emotion and understanding; our greatest
poets are those who most deeply and widely
experience and reveal the feelings of the
human heart; and the power of fiction is
that it can reax^h and express this great field
of human life with no limits but those of the
author.

When fiction began it was the legitimate

9G THE MAN-MADE WORLD

adventure, their love means more than mat-
ing. Even on so poor a line of distinction
as the "woman's column" offers, if women
are to be kept to their four K's, there should
be a "men's column" also, and all the "sport-
ing news" and fish stories be put in that;
they are not world interests, they are male
interests.

Now for the main branch — the Love
Story. Ninety per cent, of fiction is in this
line; this is pre-eminently the major interest
of life — given in fiction. What is the love-
story, as rendered by this art?

It is the story of the pre-marital struggle
It is the Adventures of Him in Pursuit of
Her — and it stops when he gets her I Story
after story, age after age, over and over and
over, this ceaseless repetition of the Prelim-
inaries.

Here is Human Life. In its large sense,
its real sense, it is a matter of inter-relation
between individuals and groups, covering aM
emotions, all processes, all experiences. Out
of this vast field of human life fiction arbit-
rarily selects one emotion, one process, one
experience, as its necessary base.

MASCULINE LITERATURE 97

"Ah I but we are persons most of all!"
protests the reader. "This is personal
experience — it has the universal appeal!"

Take human life personally, then. Here
is a Human Being, a life, covering some
seventy years, involving the changing
growth of many faculties; the ever new
marvels of youth, the long working time of
middle life, the slow ripening of age. Here
is the human soul, in the human body.
Living. Out of this field of personal life,
with all of its emotions, processes, and
experiences, fiction arbitrarily selects one
emotion, one process, one experience, mainly
of one sex.

The "love" of our stories is man's love of.,
woman. If any dare dispute this, and say
it treats equally of woman's love for man, I
answer, "Then why do the stories stop at
marriage?"

There is a current jest, revealing much, to
this effect:

The young wife complains that the hus-
band does not wait upon and woo her as he
did before marriage; to which he replies.

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

"Why should I run after the street -car when
I've caught it?"

Woman's love for man, as currently
treated in fiction is largely a reflex; it
is the way he wants her to feel, expects
her to feel. Not a fair representation
of how she does feel. If "love" is to be
selected as the most important thing in life
to write about, then the mother's love should
be the principal subject. This is the main
stream, this is the general underlying,
world-lifting force. The "hfe-force," now
so glibly chattered about, finds its fullest
expression in motherhood; not in the emo-
tions of an assistant in the preliminary
stages.

What has literature, what has fiction to
oflFer concerning mother-love, or even con-
cerning father-love, as compared to this vast
volume of excitement about lover-love ? Why
is the search-light continually focused upon
a two or three years space of life "mid the
blank miles round about?" Why indeed,
except for the clear reason, that on a starkly
masculine basis this is his one period of over-
whelming interest and excitement.

MASCULINE LITERATURE 99

If the beehive produced literature, the
bee's fiction would be rich and broad, full
of the complex tasks of comb-building and
filling, the care and feeding of the young,
the guardian-service of the queen; and far
beyond that it would spread to the blue glory
of the summer sky, the fresh winds, the end-
less beauty and sweetness of a thousand
thousand flowers. It would treat of the
vast fecundity of motherhood, the educative
and selective processes of the group-
mothers, and the passion of loyalty, of
social service, which holds the hive together.

But if the drones wrote fiction, it would
have no subject matter save the feasting, of
many ; and the nuptial flight, of one.

To the male, as such, this mating instinct
is frankly the major interest of life; even the
belligerent instincts are second to it. To the
male, as such, it is for all its intensity, but a
passing interest. In nature's economy, his
is but a temporary devotion, hers the slow
processes of life's fulfillment.

In humanity we have long since, not out-
grown, but overgrown, this stage of feeling.
In Human Parentage even the mother's

100 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

share begins to pale beside that ever-grow-
ing Social love and care, which guards and
guides the children of to-day.

The art of literature in this main form of
fiction is far too great a thing to be wholly
governed by one dominant note. As hfe
ividened and intensified, the artist, if great
enough, has transcended sex; and in the
mightier works of the real masters, we find
fiction treating of life, life in general, in aU
its complex relationships, and refusing to be
held longer to the rigid canons of an andro-
centric past.

That was the power of Balzac—- he took in
more than this one field. That was the
universal appeal of Dickens; he vrrote of
people, all kinds of people, doing all kinds
of things. As you recall with pleasure scwne
preferred novel of this general favorite, you
find yourself looking narrowly for the "love
story" in it. It is there — for it is part of
life; but it does not dominate the whole
scene — any more than it does in hfe.

The thought of the world is made and
handed out to us in the main. The makers

MASCULmBJl^-^RATURE 101

- «-* / *-

of books are the makers d£*'i}toughts and
feelings for the people in generfl3L*^ Eiction
is the most popular form in which thisCwoiid-
food is taken. If it were true, it would tea«ii^
us life easily, swiftly, truly; teach not by-
preaching but by truly re-presenting; and
we should grow up becoming acquainted
with a far wider range of life in books than
could even be ours in person. Then meeting
life in reality we should be wise — ^and not be
disappointed.

As it is, our great sea of fiction is steeped
and dyed and flavored all one way. A
young man faces life — ^the seventy year
stretch, remember, and is given book upon
book wherein one set of feelings is contin-
ually vocalized and overestimated. He reads
forever of love, good love and bad love,
natural and unnatural, legitimate and ille-
gitimate ; with the unavoidable inference that
there is nothing else going on.

If he is a healthy young man he breaks
loose from the whole thing, despises "love
stories" and takes up life as he finds it. But
what impression he does receive from fiction
is a false one, and he suflFers without know-

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

ing it frgnilack of the truer, broader views
of life it f-ailed to give him.
, -/jA young woman faces life — the seventy
;._ '-lyear stretch remember; and is given the
'.': ':' ' same books — with restrictions. Remember
the remark of Rochefoucauld, "There are
thirty good stories in the world and twenty-
nine cannot be told to women." There is a
certain broad field of literature so grossly
androcentric that for very shame men have
tried to keep it to themselves. But in a
milder form, the spades all named teaspoons,
or at the worst appearing as trowels — the
young woman is given the same fiction.
Love and love and love— from "first sight"
to marriage. There it stops — just the flut-
tering ribbon of announcement — "and lived
happily ever after."

Is that kind of fiction any sort of picture
of a woman's hfe? Fiction, under our
androcentric culture, has not given any true
picture of woman's life, very little of human
life, and a disproportioned section of man's
life.

As we daily grow more human, both of
us, this noble art is chan^ng for the better

I

MASCULINE LITERATURE 103

SO fast that a short lifetime can mark the
growth. New fields are opening and new
laborers are working in them. But it is no
swift and easy matter to disabuse the race
mind from attitudes and habits inculcated
for a thousand years. What we have been
fed upon so long we are well used to, what
we are used to we like, what we like we think
is good and proper.

The widening demand for broader, truer
fiction is disputed by the slow racial mind;
and opposed by the marketers of Uterature
on grounds of visible self-interest, as well as
lethargic conservatism.

It is difficult for men, heretofore the sole
producers and consumers of literature; and
for women, new to the field, and following
masculine canons because all the canons
were masculine; to stretch their minds to a
recognition of the change which is even now
upon us.

This one narrow field has been for so long
overworked, our minds are so filled with
heroes and heroes continually repeating the
one-act play, that when a book like David
Harum is offered the publishers refuse it

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

repeatedly, and finally insist on a "heart
interest" being injected by force.

Did anyone read David Harum for that
heart interest? Does anyone remember that
heart interest? Has humanity no interests
but those of the heart?

Robert Ellesmere was a popular book-
but not because of its heart interest.

Uncle Tom's Cabin appealed to the entire
world, more widely than any work of fiction
that was ever written ; but if anybody fell in
love and married in it they have been
forgotten. There was plenty of love in that
book, love of family, love of friends, love of
master for servant and servant for master;
love of mother for child; love of married
people for each other; love of humanity and
love of God.

It was extremely popular. Some say it
was not literature. That opinion will live,
hke the name of Empedocles.

The art of fiction is being re-born in these
days. Life is discovered to be longer, wider,
deeper, richer, than these monotonous
players of one tune would have us believe.
y; The humanizing of woman of itself opens

MASCULINE LITERATURE 105

five distinctly fresh fields of fiction: First,
the position of the young woman who is
called upon to give up her "career** — ^her
humanness — for marriage, and who objects
to it. Second, the middle-aged woman who
at last discovers that her discontent is social
starvation — ^that it is not more love that she
wants, but more business in life: Third, the
inter-relation of women with women — a
thing we could never write about before
because we never had it before: exfiSEt in
harems and convents: Fourth, the inter-
action between mothers and children; this
not the eternal "mother and child," wherein
the child is always a baby, but the long
drama of personal relationship ; the love and
hope, the patience and power, the lasting
joy and triumph, the slow eating disap-
pointment which must never be owned to a
living soul — ^here are grounds for novels
that a million mothers and many million
children would eagerly read : Fifth, the new
attitude of the full-grown woman, who faces
the demands of love with the high standards
of conscious motherhood.

There are other fields, broad and bril-

106 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

liantly promising, but this chapter is meant
merely to show that our one-sided culture
has, in this art, most disproportionately
overestimated the dominant instincts of the
\ male — Love and War — an oflFense against
I : art and truth, and an injury to life.

I

GAMES AND SPORTS 107

CHAPTER VI

GAMES AND SPORTS

ONE of the sharpest distinctions
both between the essential char-
acters and the artificial posi-
tions of men and women, is in the matter of
games and sports. By far the greater pro-
portion of them are essentially masculine,
and as such alien to women; while from
those which are humanly interesting, women
have been largely debarred by their arbi-
trary restrictions.

The play instinct is common to girls and
boys alike ; and endures in some measure
throughout life. As other young animals
express their abounding energies in capri-
cious activities similar to those followed in
the business of living, so small children
gambol, physically, like lambs and kids ; and
as the young of higher kinds of animals

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

imitate in their play the more complex
activities of their elders, so do children
imitate whatever activities they see about
them. In this field of playing there is no
sex.

Similarly in adult life healthy and happy
persons, men and women, naturally express
surplus energy in various forms of sport.
We have here one of the most distinctively
human manifestations. The great accumu-
lation of social energy, and the necessary
limitations of any one kind of work, leave a
human being tired of one form of action, yet
stiU uneasy for lack of full expression; and
this social need has been met by our great
safety valve of games and sports.

In a society of either sex, or in a society
without sex, there would still be both
pleasure and use in games; they are vitally
essential to human Ufe. In a society of two
sexes, wherein one has dictated all the terms
of Ufe, and the other has been confined to an
extremely limited fraction of human hving,
we may look to see this great field of enjoy-
ment as disproportionately divided.

It is not only that we have reduced the

CAMES AND SPORTS 109

' play impulse in women by restricting them
to one set of occupations, and over-taxing
their energies with mother-work and house-
work combined; and not only that, by our
androcentric conventions we further restrict
their amusements; but we begin in infancy,
and forcibly difFerentiate their toys and
methods of play long before any natural
distinction would appear.

Take that universal joy the doll, or
puppet, as an instance. A small imitation
I of a large known object carries delight to
I the heart of a child of either sex. The
worsted cat, the wooden horse, the little
wagon, the tin soldier, the wax doll, the toy
village, the "Noah's Ark," the omnipresent
"Teddy Bear," any and every small model
of a real tlung is a delight to the young
human being. Of all things the puppet is
the most intimate, the Httle image of another
human being to play with. The fancy of
the child, making endless combinations with
these visible types, plays as freely as a kitten
in the leaves; or gravely carries out some
observed forms of life, as the kitten imitates
its mother's hunting

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

So far all is natural and human.

Now see our attitude toward child's play
— under a masculine culture. Regarding
women only as a sex, and that sex as mani-
fest from infancy, we make and buy for oiu*
little girls toys suitable to this view. Being
femaies^which means mothers, we must
needs provide them with babies before they
cease to be babies themselves; and we expect
their play to consist in an imitation of
maternal cares. The doll, the puppet, which
interests all children, we have rendered as
an eternal baby ; and we foist them upon our
girl children by ceaseless millions.

The doll, as such, is dear to the little boy
as well as the girl, but not as a baby. He
likes his jumping-jack, his worsted Sambo,
often a genuine rag-doU; but he is discour-
aged and ridiculed in this. We do not
expect the little boy to manifest a father's
love and care for an imitation child — ^but
we do expect the little girl to show maternal
feelings for her imitation baby. It has not
yet occurred to us that this is monstrous.

Little children should not be expected to
show, in painful precocity, feelings which

GAMES AND SPORTS 111

ought never to be experienced till they come
at the proper age. Our kittens play at cat-
sports, little Tom and Tabby together; but
little Tabby does not play she is a mother I
Beyond the continuous dolls and their
continuous dressing, we provide for our
little girls tea sets and kitchen sets,
doll's houses, little workboxes — ^the imita-
tion tools of their narrow trades. For
the boy there is a larger choice. We
make for them not only the essentially
masculine toys of combat — all the enginery
of mimic war ; but also the models of human
things, like boats, railroads, wagons. For
them, too, are the comprehensive toys of the
centuries, the kite, the top, the ball. As the
boy gets old enough to play the games that
require skill, he enters the world-lists, and
the little sister, left inside, with her ever^
lasting dolls, learns that she is "only a girl,"l
and "mustn't play with boys — ^boys are]
so rough!" She has her doll and her tea set.
She "plays house." If very active she may
jump rope, in solitary enthusiasm, or in
combination of from two to four. Her
brother is playing games. From this time

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

on he plays the games of the world. The
"sporting page" should be called "the Man's
Page" as that array of recipes, fashions and
ich eap advice is called "the Woman's Page."
[ One of the immediate educational advan-

ges of the hoy's position is that he learns
"team work." This is not a masculine
L characteristic, it is a human one; a social
power. Women are equally capable of it
by nature; but not by education. Tending
one's imitation baby is not team-work; nor
is playing house. The little girl is kept
forever within the limitations of her mother's
"sphere" of action; while the boy learns life,
and fancies that new growth is due tohis
superior sex.

Now there are certain essential distinc-
tions in the sexes, which would manifest
themselves to some degree even in normally
reared children; as for instance the little
male would be more given to fighting and
destroying; the little female more to caring
for and constructing things.

"Boys are so destructive!" we say with
modest pride — as if it was in some way a
credit to them. But early youth is not the

GAMES AND SPORTS 113

itime to dTsplay sex distinction; and they
should be discouraged rather than approved.

The games of the world, now the games
of men, easily fall into two broad classes —
games of skill and games of chance.

The interest and pleasure in the latter is
purely human, and as such is shared by the
two sexes even now. Women, in the
innocent beginnings or the vicious extremes
of this line of amusement, make as wild
gamblers as men. At the races, at the
roulette wheel, at the bridge table, this is
clearly seen.

In games of skill we have a different
showing. Most of these are developed by
and for men; but when they are allowed,
women take part in them with interest and
success. In card games, in chess, checkers,
and the like, in croquet and tennis, they play,
and play weU if well-trained. Where they
fall short in so many games, and are so
wholly excluded in others, is not for lack of
human capacity, but for lack of masculinity.
Most games are male. In their element of
desire to win, to get the prize, they are male:
and in their universal attitude of competi-

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

tion they are male, the basic spirit of desire
and of combat working out through subtle
modem forms.

There is something inherently masculine
also in the universal dominance of the pro-
jectile in their games. The ball is the one
unescapable instrument of sport. From the
snapped marble of infancy to the flying
missile of the bat, this form endures. To
send sometliing forth with violence; to throw
it, bat it, kick it, shoot it; this impulse seems
to date back to one of the twin forces of the
universe — ^the centrifugal and centripetal
energies between which swing the planets.

The basic feminine impulse is to gather,
to put together, to construct; the basic
masculine impulse to scatter, to disseminate,
to destroy. It seems to give pleasure to a
man to bang something and drive it from
him; the harder he hits it and the farther it
goes the better pleased he is.

Games of this sort will never appeal to
women. They are not wrong; not neces-
sarily evil in their place; our mistake is in
considering them as human, whereas they
are only masculine.

GAMES AND SPORTS 115

Play, in the childish sense is an expression
of previous habit; and to be studied in that
light. Play in the educational sense should
be encouraged or discouraged to develop de-
sired characteristics. This we know, and
practice; only we do it under androcentric
cannons; confining the girl to the narrow
range we consider proper for women, and
assisting the boy to cover life with the ex-
pression of masculinity, when we should he
helping both to a more human development.

Our settled conviction that men are people
— the people, and that masculine qualities
are the main desideratum in life, is what
keeps up this false estimate of the value of
our present games. Advocates of football,?
for instance, proudly claim that it fits a manj
for life. Life — from the wholly male point!
of view — is a battle, with a prize. To want
something beyond measure, and to fight to
get — that is the simple proposition. This
view of life finds its most naive expression
in predatory warfare; and still tends to
make predatory warfare of the later and
more human processes of industry. Be-
cause they see life in this way they imagine

that skill and practice in the art of fighting,
especially in collective fighting, is so valu-
able in our modern life. Tliis is an archaism
which would be laughable if it were not so
dangerous in its effects.

The valuable processes to-day are those
of invention, discovery, all grades of in-
dustry, and, most especially needed, the
capacity for honest service and adixjimstra-
tion of our immense advantages. These are
not learned on the football field.

This spirit of desire and combat may be
seen further in all parts of this great subject.
It has developed into a cult of sportsman-
ship; so imiversally accepted among men as
of superlative merits as to quite blind them
to other standards of judgment.

In the Cook-Peary controversy of 1909,
this canon was made manifest. Here, one
man had spent a lifetime in tr3Tng to ac-
complishing something; and at the eleventh
hour succeeded. Then, coming out in the
rich triumph long deferred, he finds another
man, of character well known to him, im-
pudently and falsely claiming that he had
done it first. Mr. Peary expressed himself.

quite restrainedly and correctly, in regard
to the effrontery and falsity of this claim —
and all the country rose up and denounced
him as *'unsportsmanlikel"

Sport and the canons of sport are so dom-
inant in the masculine mind that what they
considered a deviation from these standards
was of far more importance than the ques-
tion of fact involved; to say nothing of the
moral obliquity of one lying to the whole
world, for money; and that at the cost of
another's bard-won triumph.

If women had condemned the conduct of
one or the other as "not good housewifery,"
this would have been considered a most
puerile comment. But to be "unsportsman-
like" is the unpardonable sin.

Owing to our warped standards we glar-
ingly misjudge the attitude of the two
sexes in regard to their amusements. Of
late years more women than ever before
have taken to playing cards; and some, un-
fortunately, play for money. A steady
stream of comment and blame follows upon
this. The amount of card playing among
—and the amomit of money lost and

THE MAN-MADE IVORLD

won, does not produce an equivalent
comment.

Quite aside from this one field of dissipa-
tion, look at the share of life, of time, of
strength, of money, given by men to their
wide range of recreation. The primitive
satisfaction of hunting and fishing they
maintain at enormous expense. This is the
indulgence of a most rudimentary impulse;
pre-social and largely pre-human, of no
service save as it aff'ects bodily health, and
of a most deterring influence on real human
development. Where hunting and fishing
is of real human sei-vice, done as a means of
livelihood, it is looked down upon like any
other industry; it is no longer "sport."

The human being kills to eat, or to sell
and eat from the returns; he kills for the
creature's hide or tusks, for use of some
sort, or to protect his crops from vermin,
his flocks from depredation ; but the sports-
man kills for the gratification of a primeval
instinct, and under rules of an arbitrary
cult. "Game" creatures are his prey; bird,
beast or fish that is hard to catch, that
requires some skill to slay; that will

I
I

GAMES AND SPORTS 119

him not mere meat and bones, but "the
pleasure of the chase."

The pleasure of the chase is a very real
one. It is exemphfied, in its broad sense in
children's play. The running and catching
games, the liiding and finding games, are
always attractive to our infancy, as they are
to that of cubs and kittens. But the long
continuance of this indulgence among
mature civilized beings is due to their
masculinity. That group of associated sex
instincts, which in the woman prompts to
the patient service and fierce defence of the
little child, in the man has its deepest root
in seeking, pursuing and catching. To hunt
is more than a means of obtaining food, in
his long ancestry ; it is to follow at any cost,
to seek through all diflSculties, to struggle
for and secure the central prize of his being
— a mate.

His "protective instincts" are far later
and more superficial. To support and care
for his wife, his children, is a recent habit,
in plain sight historically ; but "the pleasure
of the chase" is older than that. We should
remember that associate habits and impulses

130 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

last for ages upon ages in living forms; as
in the tree-climbing instincts of our earliest
years, of simian origin; and the love of
water, which dates back through unmeas-
ured time. Where for millions of years the
strongest pleasure a given organism is fitted
for, is obtained by a certain group of
activities, those activities will continue to
give pleasure long after their earlier use is
gone.

This is why men enjoy "the ardor of
pursuit" far more than women. It is an
essentially masculine ardor. To come easily
by what he wants does not satisfy him. He
wants to want it. He wants to hunt it, seek
it, chase it, catch it. He wants it to be
"game." He is by virtue of his sex a
sportsman.

There is no reason why these special
instincts should not be gratified so long as
it does no harm to the more important social
processes; but it is distinctly desirable that
we should understand their nature. The
reason why we have the present over-
whelming mass of "sporting events," from
the ball game to the prize fight, is be-

GAMES AND SPORTS 121

cause our dvilization is so overwhelmingly
masculine. We shall criticize them more
justly when we see that all this mass of
indulgence is in the first place a form of
sex-expression, and in the second place a
survival of instincts older than the oldest
savagery.

Besides our games and sports we have
a large field of "amusements" also worth
examining. We not only enjoy doing
things, but we enjoy seeing them done
by others. In these highly specialized days
most of our amusement consists in paying
two dollars to sit three hours and see other
people do things.

This in its largest sense is wholly human.
We, as social creatures, can enjoy a
thousand forms of expression quite beyond
the personal. The birds must each sing his
own song; the crickets chirp in millionfold
performance ; but the human beings feels the
deep thrill of joy in their special singers,
actors, dancers, as well as in their own
personal attempts. That we should find
pleasure in watching one another is
humanly natural, but what it is we watch.

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

the kind of pleasure and the kind of per-
formance, opens a wide field of choice.

We know, for instance, something of the
crude excesses of aboriginal Australian
dances; we know more of the gross license
of old Rome; we know the breadth of the
jokes in medieval times, and the childish
brutality of the buU-ring and the cockpit.
We know, in a word, that amusements vary;
that they form a ready gauge of character
and culture ; that they have a strong educa-
tional influence for good or bad. What we
have not hitherto observed is the predomi-
nant mascuUne influence on our amusements.
If we recall once more the statement with
regard to entertaining anecdotes, "There
are thirty good stories in the world, and
twenty-nine of them cannot be told to
women," we get a glaring sidelight on the
masculine specialization in jokes.

"Women have no sense of humor" has
been frequently said, when "Women have
not a masculine sense of humor" would be
truer. If women had thirty "good stories"
twenty-nine of which could not be told to
men, it is possible that men, if they heard

GAMES AND SPORTS 123

some of the twenty-nine, would not find
them funny. The over-weight of one sex has
told in our amusements as everywhere else.
Because men are further developed in
humanity than women are as yet, they have
huilt and organized great places of amuse- 1
ment; because they carried into their
humanity their unchecked masculinity, they
have made these amusements to correspond.
Dramatic expression, is in its true sense, not
only a human distinction, but one of our
noblest arts. It is allied with the highest
emotions; is religious, educational, patriotic,
covering the whole range of human feeling.
Through it we should be able continually to
express, in audible, visible forms, alive and
moving, whatever phase of life we most
enjoyed or wished to see. There was a time
when the drama led life; lifted, taught,
inspired, enlightened. Now its main fimc-
tion is to amuse. Under the demand for
amusement, it has cheapened and coarsened,
and now the thousand vaudeville and pic-
ture shows give us the broken fragments of
a degraded art of which our one main
demand is that it shall make us laugh.

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

There are many causes at work here ; and
while this study seeks to show in various
fields one cause, it does not claim that cause
is the only one. Our economic conditions
have enormous weight upon our amuse-
ments, as on all other human phenomena;
hut even under economic pressure the reac-
tions of men and women are often dissimilar.
Tired men and women both need amuse-
ment, the relaxation and restful change of
irresponsible gayety. The great ma.jority
of women, who work longer-hours than any
other class, need it desperately and never get
it. Amusement, entertainment, recreation,
should be open to us all, enjoyed by all. This
is a human need, and not a distinction of
either sex. Like most human things it is
not only largely monopolized by men, but
masculized throughout. Many fonns of
amusement are for men only; more for men
mostly; all are for men if they choose to go.

The entrance of women upon the stage,
and their increased attendance at theatres
has somewhat modified the nature of the
performance; even the "refined vaudeville"
now begins to show the influence of women.

1

GAMES AND SPORTS 125

It would be no great advantage to have this
department of human life feminized; the
improvement desired is to have it less mascu-
lized; to reduce the excessive influence of
one, and to bring out those broad human
interests and * pleasures which men and
women can equally participate in and enjoy.

126 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

CHAPTER VII

ETHICS AND RELIGION

THE laws of physics were at work
before we were on earth, and con-
tinued to work on us long before
we had intelligence enough to perceive, much
less understand, them. Our proven knowl-
edge of these processes constitutes "the
science of physics" ; but the laws were there
before the science.

Physics is the science of material relation,
how things and natural forces work with and
on one another. Ethics is the science of
social relation, how persons and social forces
work with and on one another.

Ethics is to the human world what physics
is to the material world; ignorance of ethics
leaves us in the same helpless position in
regard to one another that ignorance of

ETHICS AND RELIGION 127

physics left us in regard to earth, air, fire
and water.

To be sure, people lived and died and
gradually improved, while yet ignorant of
the physical sciences ; they developed a rough
"rule of thumb" method, as animals do, and
used great forces without imderstanding
them. But their lives were safer and their
improvement more rapid as they learned
more, and began to make servants of the
forces which had been their masters.

We have progressed, lamely enough, with
terrible loss and suffering, from stark
savagery to our present degree of civiliza-
tion ; we shall go on more safely and swiftly
when we learn more of the science of ethics.

Let us note first that while the underlying
laws of ethics remain steady and reliable,
human notions of them have varied widely
and still do so. In different races, ages,
classes, sexes, different views of ethics
obtain ; the conduct of the people is modified
by their views, and their prosperity is
modified by their conduct.

Primitive man became very soon aware
that conduct was of importance. As

128 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

consciousness increased, with the power to
modify action from within, instead of help-
lessly reacting to stimuli from without, there
arose the crude first codes of ethics, the
"Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not" of the
blundering savage. It was mostly "Thou
shalt not." Inhibition, the checking of an
impulse proven disadvantageous, was an
earlier and easier form of action than the
later human power to consciously decide on
and follow a course of action with no
stimulus but one's own will.

Primitive ethics consists mostly of tabus
—the things that are forbidden ; and all our
dim notions of ethics to this day, as well as
most of our religions, deal mainly with
forbidding.

This is almost the whole of our nursery
government, to an extent shown by the well-
worn tale of the child who said her name
was "Mary." "Mary what?" they asked
her. And she answered, "Mary Don't." It
is also the main body of our legal systems — a
complex mass of prohibitions and preven-
tions. And even in manners and conven-
tions, the things one should not do far

ETHICS AND RELIGION 129

outnumber the things one should. A general
policy of negation colors our conceptions of
ethics and religion.

When the positive side began to be
developed, it was at fir$t in purely arbitrary
jguid artificial form. The followers of a given
religion were required to go through certain

jnotions, as prostrating themselves, kneeling,
and the like; they were required to bring
tribute to the gods and their priests, sacri-
fices, tithes, oblations; they were set little
special performances to go through at given
times, the range of things forbidden was
broad; the range of things commanded was
narrow. The Christian religion, practically
interpreted, requires a fuller "change of
heart" and change of life than any preced-
ing it; which may account at once for its
wide appeal to enlighten peoples, and to its
scarcity of application.

Again, in surveying the field, it is seen
that as our grasp of ethical values widened,
as we called more and more acts and tend-
encies "right" and "wrong," we have shown
astonishing fluctuations and vagaries in our

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

judgment. Not only in our religions, which
have necessarily upheld each its own set of
prescribed actions as most "right," and its
own special prohibitions as most "wrong;"
but in our beliefs about ethics and our real
conduct, we have varied absurdly.

Take, for instance, the ethical concept
among "gentlemen" a century or so since,
which put the paying of one's gambling
debts as a well-nigh sacred duty, and the
paying of a tradesman who had fed and
clothed one as a quite negligible matter. If
the process of gambling was of social service,
and the furnishing of food and clothes was
not, this might be good ethics; but as the
contrary is true, we have to account for this
peculiar view on other grounds.

Again, where in Japan a girl, to maintain
her parents, is justified in leading a life of
shame, we have a peculiar ethical standard
difficult for Western minds to appreciate.
Yet in such an instance as is described in
"Auld Robin Gray," we see precisely the
same code; the girl, to benefit her parents,
marries a rich old man she does not love — -
which is to lead a life of shame. The ethical

ETHICS AND RELIGION 131

View which justifies this, puts the benefit of
parents above the benefit of children, rob'S^
the daughter of happiness and motherhood,
injures posterity to assist ancestors.

This is one of the products of that very
early religion, ancestor worship ; and here we
lay a finger on a distinctly masculine
influence.

We know little of ethical values during
the matriarchate ; whatever they were, they
must have depended for sanction on a cult
of promiscuous but efficient maternity. Our
recorded history begins in the patriarchal
period, and it is its ethics alone which we
know.

The mother instinct, throughout nature,
is one of unmixed devotion, of love and
service, care and defense, with no self-
interest. The animal father, in such cases
as he is of service to the young, assists the
mother in her work in similar fashion. But
the himian father in the family with the male
head soon made that family an instrument
of desire, and combat, and self-expression,
following the essentially masculine impulses.
The children were his, and, if males, valuable

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

to serve and glorify him. In bis dominance
over servile women and helpless children,
free rein was ^ven to the growth of pride
and the exercise of irresponsible tyranny.
To these feelings, developed without check
for thousands of years, and to the mental
habits resultant, it is easy to trace much of
the bias of our early ethical concepts.

Perhaps it is worth while to repeat here
that the effort of this book is by no means
to attribute a wholly evil influence to men,
and a wholly good one to women; it is not
even claimed that a purely feminine culture
woidd have advanced the world more suc-
cessfully. It does claim that the influence
of the two together is better than that of
either one alone; and in special to point out
what special kind of injury is due to the
exclusive influence of one sex heretofore.

We have to-day reached a degree of
human development where both men and
women are capable of seeing over and across
the distinctions of sex, and mutually work-
ing for the advancement of the world. Our
progress is, however, seriously impeded by
\ what we may call the masculine tradition,

ETHICS AND RELIGION 133

the unconscious dominance of a race habit
based bii this long androcentric period; and
it is well worth while, in the interests of both
sexes, to show the mischievous effects of the
predominance of one.

We have in our cities not only a "double
standard" in one special line, but in nearly
all. Man, as a sex, has quite naturally
deified his oM^n qualities rather than those
of his opposite. In his codes of manners, of
morals, of laws, in his early concepts of God,
his ancient religions, we see masculinity
written large on every side. Confining
women wholly to their feminine functions,
he has required of them only what he called
feminine virtues; and the one virtue he has
demanded, to the complete overshadowing
of all others, is measured by wholly mascu-
line requirements.

In the interests of health and happiness,
monogamous marriage proves its superior-
ity in our race as it has in others. It is essen-
tial to the best growth of humanity that we
practice the virtue of chastity ; it is a human
virtue, not a feminine one. But in the mas-
culine hands this virtue was enforced upon

134 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

women under penalties of hideous cruelty,
and quite ignored by men. Masculine ethics,
colored by masculine instincts, always domi-
nated by sex, has at once recognized the
value of chastity in the woman, which is
right; punished its absence unfairly, which
is wrong; and then reversed the whole
matter when applied to men, which is ridicu-
lous.

Ethical laws are laws — ^not idle notions.
Chastity is a virtue because it promotes
himian welfare — ^not because men happen to
prize it in women and ignore it themselves.
The underlying reason for the whole thing
is the benefit of the child; and to that end
a pure and noble fatherhood is requisite, as
well as such a motherhood. Under the limi-
tations of a too masculine ethics, we have
developed on this one line social conditions
which would be absurdly funny if they were
not so horrible.

Religion, be it noticed, does not bear out
this attitude. The immense human need of
religion, the noble human character of the
great religious teachers, has always set its

ETHICS AND RELIGION 135

standards, when first established, ahead of
human conduct.

Some there are, men of learning and
authority, who hold that the deadening im-
mobility of our religions, their resistance
to progress and relentless preservation of
primitive ideals, is due to the conservatism
of women. Men, they say, are progressive
by nature ; women are conservative. Women
are more religious than men, and so preserve
old religious forms unchanged after men
have outgrown them.

If we saw women in absolute freedom,
with a separate religion devised by women,
practiced by women, and remaining im-
changed through the centuries; while men,
on the other hand, boimded bravely for-
ward, making new ones as fast as they were
needed, this belief might be maintained.
But what do we see ? All the old religions ;
made by men, and forced on the women.'
whether they liked it or not. Often women
not even considered as part of the scheme —
denied souls — given a much lower place
in the system — going from the service
of their father's goods to the service

136 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

of their husbands — Shaving none of their own.
We see religions which make practically no
place for women, as with the Moslem, as
rigidly bigoted and michanging as any
other.

We see also this: that the wider and
deeper the religion, the more hmnan, the
more it calls for practical application — as in
Christianity— the more it appeals to women.
Further, in the diverging sects of the
Christian religion, we find that its progres-
siveness is to be measured not by the num-
bers of its women adherents, but by their
relative freedom. The women of America,
who belong to a thousand sects, who follow
new ones with avidity, who even make them,
and who also leave them all as men do, are
women, as well as those of Spain, who
remain contented Romanists; but in Amer-
ica the status of women is higher.

The fact is this: a servile womanhood is
in a state of arrested development, and as
such does form a ground for the retention
of ancient ideas. But this is due to the con-
dition of servility, not to womanhood, that
women at present are the bulwark of the

ETHICS AND RELIGION 137

older forms of our religions is due to the
action of two classes of men : the men of the
world, who keep women in their restricted
position, and the men of the church, who
take every advantage of the limitations of
women. When we have for the first time
in history a really civilized womanhood, we
can then judge better of its effect on
religion.

Meanwhile, we can see quite clearly the
effect of manhood. Keeping in mind those
basic masculine impulses — desire and com-
bat — ^we see them reflected from high heaven
in their religious concepts. Reward ! Some-
thing to want tremendously and struggle to
achieve ! This is a concept perfectly mascu-
line and most imperfectly religious. A
religion is partly explanation — a theory of
life; it is partly emotion — an attitude of
mind; it is partly action — a system of
morals. Man's special effect on this large
field of human development is clear. He
pictured his early gods as like to himself,
and they behaved in accordance with his
ideals. In the dinmiest, oldest religions,
nearest the matriarchate, we fiind great god-

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

desses — types of Motherhood, Mother-love,
Mother-care and Service. But under mas-
culine dominance, Isis and Ashteroth
dwindle away to an alluring Aphrodite—
not Womanhood — for the Child and the
World — but the incarnation of female at-
tractiveness for man.

As the idea of heaven developed in the
man's mind it became the Happy Hunting
Ground of the savage, the beery and gory
Valhalla of the Norseman, the vuluptuous,
many-houri-ed Paradise of the Mohamme-
dan. These are men's heavens all. Women
have never been so fond of hunting, beer or
blood ; and their houris would be of the other
kind. It may be said that the early Christian
idea of heaven is by no means planned for
men. That is true, and is perhaps the
reason why it has never had so compelUng
an attraction for them.

Very early in his vague efforts towards
religious expression, man voiced his second
strongest instinct — that of combat. His
universe is always dual, always a scene of
combat. Bom with that impulse, exercising
it continually, he naturally assumed it to be

ETHICS AND RELIGION

the major process in life. It is not.
Growth is the major process. Combat
is a useful subsidiary process, chiefly valu-
able for its initial use, to transmit the
physical superiority of the victor. Psychic
and social advantages are not thus secured
or transmitted.

In no one particular is the androcentric
character of our common thought more
clearly shown than in the general deification
of what are now described as "conflict
stimuli." That which is true of the male
creature as such is assumed to he true of life
in general; quite naturally, but by no means
correctly. To this universal masculine error
we may trace in the field of religion and
ethics the great devil theory, which has for
so long obscured our minds. A God with-l
out an Adversary was inconceivable to the]
masculine mind. From this basic miscon-
ception we find all our ideas of ethics dis-
torted; that which should have been treated
as a group of truths to he learned and habits
to be cultivated was treated in terms of com-
bat, and moral growth made an everlasting
I battle. This combat theory we may follow

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

later into our common notions of discipline,
government, law and punishment ; here is it
enough to see its painful effects in this pri-
mary field of ethics and religion?

The third essential male trait of self-ex-
pression we may follow from its irmocent
natural form in strutting cock or stamping
stag up to the characteristics we lahel vanity
and pride. The degradation of women in
forcing them to adopt masculine methods of
personal decoration as a means of livelihood,
has carried with the concomitant of personal
vanity ; but to this day and at their worst we
do not find in women the naive exultant
glow of pride which swells the bosom of the
men who march in procession with brass
bands, in full regalia of any sort, so that
it be gorgeous, exhibiting their glories to all.

It is this purely masculine spirit which has
given to our early concepts of Deity the un-
admirable qualities of boundless pride and
a thirst for constant praise and prostrate
admiration, characteristics certainly unbefit-
ting any noble idea of God. Desire, combat
and self-expression all have had their un-
avoidable influence on masculine religions.

I

ETHICS AND RELIGION 141

What deified Maternity a purely feminine
culture might have put forth we do not
know, having had none such. Women are
generally credited with as much moral sense
as men, and as much religious instinct; hut
so far it has had small power to modify our
prevailing creeds.

As a matter of fact, no special sex attri-
butes should have any weight in our ideas
of right and wrong. Ethics and religion are
distinctly human concerns ; they belong to us
as social factors, not as physical ones. As
we learn to recognize our humanness, and
to leave our sex characteristics where they
belong, we shall at last learn something
about ethics as a simple and practical
science, and see that religions grow as the
mind grows to formulate them.

If anyone seeks for a clear, simple, easily
grasped proof of our man-made ethics, it is
to be found in a popular proverb. Strug-
gHng upward from beast and savage into
humanness, man has seen, reverenced, and
striven to attain various human virtues.

He was willing to check many primitive
impulses, to change many barbarous habits.

142 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

to manifest newer, nobler powers. Much he
would concede to Humanness, but not his
sex — ^that was beyond the range of Ethics or
^iReligion, By the state of what he calls
"morals/* and the laws he makes to regulate
them, by his attitude in courtship and in
marriage, and by the gross anomaly of mili-
tarism, in all its senseless waste of life and
wealth and joy, we may perceive this little
masculine exception:

* 'All's fair in love and war/'

EDUCATION 143

CHAPTER VIII

EDUCATION

THE origin of education is maternal.
The mother animal is seen to teach
her yomig what she knows of life,
its gains and losses; and, whether consci-
ously done or not, this is education. In our
human life, education, even in its present
state, is the most important process. With-
out it we could not maintain ourselves, much
less dominate and improve conditions as we
do ; and when education is what it should be,
our power will increase far beyond present
hopes.

In lower animals, speaking generally, the
powers of the race must be lodged in each
individual. No gain of personal experience
is of avail to the others. No advantages
remain, save those physically transmitted.
The narrow limits of personal gain and per-

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

^

sonal inheritance rigidly hem in suh-human
progress. With us, what one learns may be
taught to the others. Our life is social, col-
lective. Our gain is for all, and profits us
in proportion as we extend it to all. As the
human soul develops in us, we become able
to grasp more fully our common needs and
advantages; and with this growth has come
the extension of education to the people as
a whole. Social functions are developed
under natural laws, like physical ones, and
may be studied similarly.

In the evolution of this basic social fiinc-
tion, what has been the effect of wholly mas-
culine influence?

The original process, instruction of indi-
vidual child by individual mother, has been
largely neglected in our man-made world.
That was considered as a subsidiary sex-
function of the woman, and as such, left to
her instinct. This is the main reason why
we show such great progress in education
for older children, and especially for youths,
and so little comparatively in that given to
yomiger ones.

We have had on the one side the natural

EDUCATION 145

current of maternal education, with its first
assistant, the nursemaid, and its second, the
"dame-school"; and on the other the influ-
ence of the dominant class, organized in uni-
versity, coUege and public school, slowly
filtering downward.

Educational forces are many. The child
is born into certain conditions, physical
and psychic, and "educated" thereby. He
grows up into social, political and economic
conditions, and is further modified by them.
All these conditions, so far, have been of
androcentric character; but what we call
education as a special social process is what
the child is deliberately taught and sub-
jected to; and it is here we may see the
same dominant influence so clearly.

This conscious education was, for long,
given to boys alone, the girls being left to
maternal influence, each to learn what her
mother knew, and no more. This very clear
instance of the masculine theory is glaring
enough by itself to rest a case on. It shows
how absolute was the assumption that the
world was composed of men, and men alone
were to be fitted for it. Women were no

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

part of the world, and needed no training
for its uses. As females they were born and
not made; as human beings they were only
servants, trained as such by their servant
mothers.

This system of education we are out-
growing more swiftly with each year. The
growing humanness of women, and its
recognition, is forcing an equal education
for boy and girl. When this demand was
first made, by women of unusual calibre,
and by men sufficiently human to overlook
sex-prejudice, how was it met? What was
the attitude of woman's "natural protector'*
when she began to ask sorae share in human
Ufe?

Under the universal assumption that men
alone were humanity, that the world was
masculine and for men only, the efforts of
the women were met as a deUberate attempt
to "imsex" themselves and become men. To
be a wommi was to be ignorant, unedu-
cated; to be wise, educated, was to be a man.
Women were not men, visibly; therefore
they could not be educated, and ought not
to want to be.

I

EDUCATION 147

Under this androcentric prejudice, the
equal extension of education to women was
opposed at every step, and is still opposed
by many. Seeing in women only sex, and
not humanness, they would confine her
exclusively to feminine interests. This is
the masculine view, par excellence. In spite
of it, the human development of women,
which so splendidly characterizes our age,
has gone on; and now both women's colleges
and those for both sexes offer "the higher
education" to our girls, as well as the lower
grades in school and kindergarten.

In the special professional training, the
same opposition was experienced, even more
rancorous and cruel. One would think that
on the entrance of a few straggling and
necessarily inferior feminine beginners into
a trade or profession, those in possession
would extend to them the right hand of
fellowship, as comrades, extra assistance as
beginners, and special courtesy as women.

The contrary occurred. Women were
barred out, discriminated against, taken
advantage of, as competitors ; and as women
they have had to meet special danger and

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

offence instead of special courtesy. An
unforgetable instance of this lies in the at-
titude of medical colleges toward women
students.

The men, strong enough, one would think,
in numbers, in knowledge, in established
precedent, to be generous, opposed the new-
comers first with absolute refusal; then
when the patient, persistent applicants did
get inside, both students and teachers met
them not only with imkindness and unfair-
ness, but with a weapon ingeniously well
chosen, and most discreditable — namely,
obscenity. Grave professors, in lecture and
clinic, as well as grinning students, used
offensive language, and played offensive
tricks, to drive the women out— a most
androcentric performance.

Remember that the essential masculine
attitude is one of opposition, of combat;
his desire is obtained by first overcoming
a competitor; and then see how this domin-
ant masculinity stands out where it has no
possible use or benefit — in the field of educa-
tion. All along the line, man, long master
of a subject sex, fought every step of

I

EDUCATION 149

woman toward mental equality. Neverthe-
less, since modern man has become human
enough to be just, he has at last let her have
a share in the advantages of education; and
she has proven her full power to appreciate
and use these advantages.

Then to-day rises a new cry against
"women in education." Here is Mr. Bar-
rett Wendell, of Harvard, solemnly claim-
ing that teaching women weakens the intel-
lect of the teacher, and every now and then
bursts out a frantic sputter of alarm over
the "feminization" of our schools. It lis
true that the majority of teachers are now
women. It is true that they do have an
influence on growing children. It would
even seem to be true that that is largely
what women are for.

But the male assumes his influence to be *
normal, human, and the female influence as ,
wholly a matter of sex; therefore, where
' women teach boys, the boys become "eflfemi-
I nate" — a grievious fall. When men teach

girls, do the g^rls become ? Here again

we lack the analogue. Never has it occurred
to the androcentric mind to conceive of

150 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

such a thing as being too masculine. There
is no such word! It is odd to notice that
which ever way the woman is placed, she is
supposed to exert this degrading influence;
if the teacher, she effeminizes her pupils; if
the pupil, she effeminizes her teachers.

Now let us shake ourselves free, if only
for a moment, from the androcentric habit
of mind.

As a matter of sex, the female is the more
important. Her share of the processes
which sex distinction serves is by far greater.
To be feminine — if one were nothing else,
is a far more extensive and dignified office
than to he masculine — and nothing else.

But as a matter of humanity the male of
our species is at present far ahead of the
female. By this superior humanness, his
knowledge, his skill, his experience, his
organization and specialization, he makes
and manages the world. All this is human,
not ^male. All this is open to the woman as
the man by nature, but has been denied her
during our androcentric culture.

But even if, in a purely human process,

EDUCATION 151

uch as education, she does bring her special
feminine characteristics to bear, what are
they, and what are the results ?

We can see the masculine influence every-
where still dominant and superior. There
is the first spur, Desire, the base of the
reward system, the incentive of self-interest,
the attitude which says, "Why should I
make an effort unless it will give rae pleas-
ure?" with its concomitant laziness, unwill-
ingness to work without payment. There is
the second spur, Combat, the competitive
system, which sets one against another, and
flnds pleasure not in learning, not exercis-
ing the mind, but in getting ahead of one's
fellows. Under these two wholly masculine
influences we have made the educational
process a joy to the few who successfully
attain, and a weary eifort, with failure and
contumely attached, to all the others. This
may be a good method in sex-competition,
but is whoUy out of place and mischievous in
education. Its prevalence shows the injuri-
ous mascuhzation of this noble social pro-
cess.

What might we look for in a distinctly

152 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

feminine influence? What are these much-
dreaded feminine cliaracteristics?

The maternal ones, of course. The sex
instincts of the male are of a preliminary
nature, leading merely to the union preced-
ing parenthood. The sex instincts of the
female cover a far larger field, spending
themselves most fully in the lasting love,
the ceaseless service, the ingenuity and
courage of efficient motherhood. To femin-
ize education would be to make it more
motherly. The mother does not rear her
children by a system of prizes to be longed
for and pursued; nor does she set them to
compete with one another, giving to the
conquering child what he needs, and to the
vanquished, blame and deprivation. That
would be "unfeminine."

Motherhood does all it knows to give to
each child what is most needed, to teach all
to their fullest capacity, to affectionately
and efficiently develop the whole of them.

But this is not what is meant By those who
fear so much the influence of women. Accus-
tomed to a wholly male standard of living,
to masculine ideals, virtues, methods and

I

EDUCATION 153

conditions, they say — and say with some
justice- — that feminine methods and ideals
would be destructive to what they call "man-
liness." For instance, education to-day is
closely interwoven with games and sports,
all of an excessively masculine nature. "The
education of a boy is carried on largely on
the playground 1" say the objectors to
'omen teachers. Women cannot join them
;here; therefore, they cannot educate them.

What games are these in which woman
cannot join? There are forms of fight-
ing, of course, \aolent and fierce, mod-
modifications of the instinct of sex-

imbat. It is quite true that women are
not adapted, or inchned, to baseball or foot-
ball or any violent game. They are per-
fectly competent to take part in all normal
athletic development, the human range of
agihty and skill is open to them, as every-
one knows who has been to the circus; but
they are not built for physical combat; nor
do they find ceaseless pleasure in throwing,
batting or kicking things.

But is it true that these strenuous games
have the educational value attributed to

154

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

them? It seems like blasphemy to question
it. The whole range of male teachers, male
pupils, male critics and spectators, are loud
in their admiration for the "manliness"
developed by the craft, courage, co-ordina-
tive power and general "sportsmanship"
developed by the game of football, for
instance; that a few young men are killed
and many maimed, is nothing in compari-
son to these advantages.

Let us review the threefold distinction on
which this whole study rests, between mas-
culine, feminine and human. Grant that
woman, being feminine, cannot emulate
man in being masculine — and does not want
to. Grant that the masculine qualities have
their use and value, as well as feminine ones.
There still remains the human qualities
shared by both, owned by neither, most
Important of all. Education is a human
process, and should develop human quali-
ties — not sex qualities. Surely our boys are
sufficiently masculine, without needing a
speciid education to make them more so.

The error lies here. A strictly mascu-
line world, proud of its own sex and despis-

EDUCATION

ing the other, seeing nothing in the world
but sex, either male or female, has "viewed
with alarm" the steady and rapid growth of
humamiess. Here, for instance, is a boy
visibly tending to be an artist, a musician,
a scientific discoverer. Here is another boy
not particularly clever in any line, nor
ambitious for special work, though he
means in a general way to "succeed";
he is, however, a big, husky fellow, a
good fighter, mischievous as a monkey, and
strong in the virtues covered by the word
"sportsmanship." This boy we call "a fijie
manly fellow."

We are quite right. He is. He is dis-
tinctly and excessively male, at the expense
of his humanness. He may make a more
prepotent sire than the other, though even
that is not certain; he may, and probably
will, appeal more strongly to the excessively
feminine girl, who has even less humanness
than he; but he is not therefore a better
citizen.

The advance of civilization calls for
human qualities, in both men and women.
3ur educational system is thwarted and

156

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

hindered, not as Prof. Wendell and his like
would have us believe, by "feminization,"
but by an over-weening masculization.

Their position is a simple one. "We are
men. Men are human beings. Women are
only women. This is a man's world. To
get on in it you must do it man-fashion — i.e.,
fight, and overcome the others. Being civ-
ilized in part, we must arrange a sort of "civ-
ilized warfare," and learn to play the game,
the old crude, fierce male game of combat,
and we must educate our boys thereto. No
wonder education was denied to women. No
wonder their influence is dreaded by an
ultra-masculine culture.

It will change the system in time. It wiU
gradually establish an equal place in life for
the feminine characteristics, so long be- '
httled and derided, and give pre-eminent i
dignity to the human power. I

Physical culture, for both boys and girls,
will be part of such a modified system. All
things that both can do together will be
accepted as human ; but what either boys or
girls have to retire apart to practice will be

EDUCATION

' frankly called masculine or feminine, and
not encouraged in children.

The most important qualities are the
human ones, and will be so named and hon-
ored. Courage is a human quality, not a
sex-quality. What is commonly called
courage in male animals is mere belliger-
ence, the fighting instinct. To meet an
adversary of his own sort is a universal mas-
culine trait; two father eats may fight
fiercely each other, but both will run from

m% dog as quickly as a mother cat. She has
»urage enough, however, in defense of her

' kittens.

What this world most needs to-day in
both men and women, is the power to recog-
nize our public conditions ; to see the relative
importance of measures; to learn the pro-
cesses of constructive citizenship. We need
an education which shall give us facts in the
order of their importance; morals and man-
ners based on these facts; and train our per-
sonal powers with careful selection, so that
each may best serve the community.

At present, in the larger processes of
extra-scholastic education, the advantage

>W r^^^ MAN-MADE WORLD

i»jtfllvMitlrlMy^« From infancy we make
tiW ijpws MJitifai of iDoentuating sex in our
dilihieiiw ^^ Jkos and all its limitations, by
spimii »irlia|t of wliat is 'ladylike" and
^'tuaii^.'^ TW Imr is allowed a freedom of
eM^<n^««e ftr W^^oadl llie gttL He learns
iHMM^ of hia^ %a«m and city, more of maehin-
<fy^ ttM^ of Ki^ jasaing on from father to
$ikMit tlme^ tmttft ats wdl as traditions of sex

Alt tibb i» i^lai^iBW^y More our eyes, with
^ ^iJKiiiiicdQ^ liiwaMmT of wom^i. Not
>^ W^a^t^x kfli^ tibeir adranee affected, to
^W»iy W^ l^\^^^^ ttie Vase of all education;
^ ^x^<¥W«ik>^ of a daM^s first years. Here
)» >iiVii^f^ tik»^ IMlaliMS of womai have
vViN'k.i^l Ttftc^ f«o^prtss most thoroughly.
^I^^f^ W»t^t«inr wHoenee was constantly
v^lXM Vy tW adYanw of tiie male. Social
^KN^'liivw ^ iiie^vdQf^ )Mgb« types of men,
^Voi^ ^ex^^^l^^tion rererscd still insisted
w^ V^riwitiw types erf women. Buttheedu-
c^tivi^ uUlue«ie« cf these primitive women,
^""(tti^ ii¥^t exclusively on tiie most suscep-

ye«rs erf Kf e» has beai a serious deter-

Wrace prc^gress.

EDUCATION 159

•

Here is the daminant male, largely human-
ized, yet still measuring life from male
standards. He sees women only as a sex.
(Note here the criticism of Europeans on
American women. "Your women are so
sexless r* they say, meaning merely that our
women have human qualities as well as fem-
inine.) And children he considers as part
and parcel of the same domain, both inferior
classes, "women and children.*'

I recall in Bimmer's beautiful red chalk
studies, certain profiles of man, woman and
child, and careful explanation that the pro-
portion of the woman's face and head were
far more akin to the child than to the man.
What Mr. Rimmer should have shown, and
could have, by profuse illustration, was that
the faces of boy and girl diflFer but slightly,
and the faces of old men and women differ
as little, sometimes not at all ; while the face
of the woman approximates the human
more closely than that of the man; and the
child, representing race more than sex, is
naturally more akin to her than to him. The
male preserves more primitive qualities, the
hairiness, the more pugnacious jaws; the

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

female is nearer to the higher human types.

An ultra-male selection has chosen women
for their femininity first, and next for
qualities of submissiveness and patient serv-
ice bred by long ages of servility.

This servile womanhood, or the idler and
more excessively feminine type, has never
appreciated the real power and place of the
mother, and has never been able to grasp
or to carry out any worthy system of educa-
tion for little children. Any experienced
teacher, man or woman, will own how rare
it is to find a mother capable of a dispas-
sionate appreciation of educative values.
Books in infant education and child culture
generally are read by teachers more than
mothers, so our public libraries prove. The
mother-instinct, quite suitable and suiBcient
in animals, is by no means equal to the re-
quirements of civilized life. Animal mother-
hood furnishes a fresh wave of devotion for
each new birth; primitive human mother-
hood extends that passionate tenderness
over the growing family for a longer period;
but neither can carry education beyond its
rudiments.

EDUCATION 161

So accustomed are we to our world-old
method of entrusting the first years of the
child to the action of untaught, unbridled
mother-instinct, that suggestions as to a bet-
ter education for babies are received with
the frank derision of massed ignorance.

That powerful and brilliant writer, Mrs.
Josephine Daskam Bacon, among others,
has lent her able pen to ridicule and obstruct
the gradual awakening of human intelli-
gence in mothers, the recognition that babies
are no exception to the rest of ys in being
better oflF for competent care and service.
It seems delightfully absurd to these reac-
tionaries that ages of human progress
should be of any benefit to babies, save, in-
deed, as their more human fathers, spe-
cialized and organized, are able to provide
them with better homes and a better world
to grow up in. The idea that mothers, more
human, should specialize and organize as
well, and extend to their babies these su-
preme advantages, is made a laughing-
stock.

It is easy and profitable to laugh with the
majority; but in the judgment of history,

162 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

those who do so, hold imeviable positions.
The time is coming when the human mother
will recognize the educative possibilities of
early childhood, learn that the ability to
rightly teach little children is rare and pre-
cious, and be proud and glad to avail them-
selves of it.

We shall then see a development of the
most valuable human qualities in o^xr chil-
dren's minds such as would now seem wildly
Utopian. We shall learn from wide and
long experience to anticipate and provide
for the steps of the unfolding mind, and train
it through carefully prearranged experi-
ences, to a power of judgment, of self-con-
trol, of social perception, now utterly un-
thought of.

Such an education would begin at birth;
yes, far before it, in the standards of con-
scious human motherhood. It would re-
quire a quite different status of wifehood,
womanhood, girlhood. It would be wholly
impossible if we were never to outgrow, our
androcentric culture.

"SOCIETY" AND "FASHION" 163

CHAPTER IX.

"sOCIETr'' AND ^^FASHION^^

AMONG our many naive misbeliefs is
the current fallacy that "society" is
made by women; and that women
are responsible for that peculiar social mani-
festation called "fashion/*

Men and women alike accept this notion;
the serious essayist and philosopher, as
well as the novelist and paragrapher, reflect
it in their pages. The force of inertia acts
in the domain of psychics as well as physics ;
any idea pushed into the popular mind
with considerable force will keep on going
until some opposing force — or the slow re-
sistance of friction — stops it at last.

"Society" consists mostly of women.
Women carry on most of its processes,
therefore women are its makers and mas-

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

ters, they are responsible for it, that is the
general belief.

We might as well hold women responsible
for harems— or prisoners for jails. To be
helplessly confined to a given place or con-
dition does not prove that one has chosen
it; much less made it.

No; in an androcentric culture "society,"
like every other social relation, is dominated
by the male and arranged for his eonvwii-
ence. There are, of course, modifications
due to the presence of the other sex ; where
there are more women than men there are
inevitable results of their influence; but the
character and conditions of the whole per-
formance are dictated by men.

Social intercourse is the prime condition
of human life. To meet, to mingle, to know
one another, to exchange, not only definite
ideas, facts, and feelings, but to experience
that vague general stimulus and enlarged
power that comes of contact — all this is
essential to our happiness as well as to our
progress.

This grand desideratum has always been
monopolized by men as far as possible.

"SOCIETY" AND "FASHION" 165

What intercourse was allowed to women
has been rigidly hemmed in by man-
made conventions. Women accept these
conventions, repeat them, enforce them upon
their daughters; but they originate with
men.

The feet of the little Chinese girl are
bound by her mother and her nurse — but it
is not for woman's pleasure that this crip-
pling torture was invented. The Oriental
veil is worn by women, but it is not for any
need of theirs that veils were decreed them.

When we look at society in its earher
form we find that the pubhc house has al-
ways been with us. It is as old almost as
the private house; the need for association
is as human as the need for privacy. But
the public house was — and is — for men only.
The woman was kept as far as possible at
home. Her female nature was supposed to
delimit her life satisfactorily, and her hu-
man nature was completely ignored.

Under the pressure of that human nature
she has always rebelled at the social restric-
tions which surroimded her; and from the
women of older lands gathered at the well,

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

or in the market place, to our own women
on the church steps or in the sewing circle,
they have ceaselessly struggled for the so-
cial intercourse which was as much a law of
their being as of man's.

When we come to the modern special field
that we call "society," we find it to consist
of a. carefully arranged set of processes and
places wherein women may meet one another
and meet men. These vary, of course, with
race, country, class and period; from the
clean licence of our western customs to the
strict chaperonage of older lands; but free
as it is in America, even here there are
bounds.

Men associate without any limit but thai
of inclination and financial capacity. Even
class distinction only works one way — ^the
low-class man may not mingle with high-
class women; but the high-class man may —
and does — ^mingle with low-class women. It
is his society — may not a man do what he will
with his own?

Caste distinctions, as have been ably shown
by Prof. Lester F. Ward, are relics of race
distinction; the subordinate caste was once

"SOCIETY" AND "FASHION" 167

a subordinate race; and while mating, up-
ward, was always forbidden to the subject
race; mating, downward, was always prac-
ticed by the master race.

The elaborate shading of "the color line"
in slavery days, from pm-e black up through
mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, quinteroon,
griffada, mustaf ee, mustee, and sang d'or —
to white again; was not through white
mothers — ^but white fathers, never too exclu-
sive in their tastes. Even in slavery, the
worst horrors were strictly androcentric.

"Society" is strictly guarded — ^that is its
women are. As always, the main tabu is on
the woman. Consider carefully the relation
between "society" and the growing girl. She
must, of course marry; and her education,
manners, character, must of course be pleas-
ing to the prospective wooer. That which
is desirable in young girls means, naturally,
that which is desirable to men. Of all culti-
vated accomplishments the first is "inno-
cence." Beauty may or may not be forth-
coming; but "innocence" is "the chief charm
of girlhood."

Why? What good does it do her? Her

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

whole life's success is made to depend on her
marrying; her health and happiness depends
on her marrying the right man. The more
"innocent" she is, the less she knows, the
easier it is for the wrong man to get her.

As is so feelingly descrihed in "The Sor-
rows of Amelia," in "The I^adies' Literary
Cabinet," a magazine taken by my grand-
mother; "The only foible which the delicate
Amelia possessed was an unsuspecting
breast to lavish esteem: Unversed in the
secret villainies of a base degenerate world,
she ever imagined all mankind to be as spot-
less as herself. Alas for Amelia! This
fatal credulity was the source of all her mis-
fortunes." It was. It is yet.

Just face the facts with new eyes — look
at it as if you had never seen "society"
before; and observe the position of its
"Queen."

Here is woman. Let us grant that Mother-
hood is her chief purpose. {As a female it
is. As a human being she has others!)
Marriage is our way of safeguarding
motherhood; of ensuring "support" and
"protection" to the wife and children.

i(

SOCIETY" AND ^'FASHION" 169

"Society" is very largely used as a means
to bring together young people, to promote
marriage. If "society" is made and gov-
erned by women we should naturally look to
see its restrictions and encouragements such
as would put a premium on successful
maternity, and protect women-and their
children — from the evils of ill-regulated
fatherhood.

Do we find this ? By no means.

"Society" allows the man all liberty — all
privilege — all license. There are certain
offences which would exclude him; such as
not paying gambling debts, or being poor;
but offences against womanhood — against
motherhood — do not exclude him.

How about the reverse?

If "society" is made by women, for
women, surely a misstep by a helplessly
"innocent" girl, will not injure her standing!

But it does. She is no longer "innocent."
She knows now. She has lost her market
value and is thrown out of the shop. Why
not? It is his shop — ^not hers. What/-
women may and may not be, what they^

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

must and must not do, all is measured from
. the masculine standard.

A really feminine "society" based on the
needs and pleasures of women, both as
females and as human beings, would in the
first place accord them freedom and knowl-
edge; the knowledge which is power. It
would not show us "the queen of the ball-
room" in the position of a wall-flower unless
favored by masculine invitation; unable to
eat unless he brings her something; unable
to cross the floor without his arm. Of all
blind stultified "royal sluggards" she is the
archtype. No, a feminine society would
grant at least equality to women in this, their
so-called special field.

Its attitude toward men, however, would
be rigidly critical.

Fancy a real Mrs. Grundy (up to date
it has been a Mr., his whiskers hidden in cap-
strings) saying, "No, no, young man. You
won't do. You've been drinking. The
habit's growing on you. You'll make a bad
husband."

Or still more severely, "Out with you, sir I
You've forfeited your right to marry I Go

"SOCIETY" AND "FASHION" 171

into retirement for seven years, and when
you come back bring a doctor's certificate
with you."

That sounds ridiculous, doesn't it — for
"Society" to say? It is ridiculous, in a man's
"society."

The required dress and decoration of
"society"; the everlasting eating and drink-
ing of "society," the preferred amusements
of "society," the absolute requirements and
absolute exclusions of "society," are of men,
by men, for men — ^to paraphrase a thread-
bare quotation. And then, upon all that
vast edifice of masculine influence, they turn
upon women as Adam did; and blame them
for severity with their fallen sisters 1
"Women are so hard upon women 1"

They have to be. What man would
"allow" his wife, his daughters, to visit and
associate with "the fallen"? His esteem
would be forfeited, they would lose their
"social position," the girl's chance of marry-
ing would be gone.

Men are not so stern. They may visit
the unfortunate wc«nen, to bring them help,
sympathy, re-estabUshment — or for other

17S

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

reasons; and it does not forfeit their social
position. Why should it? They make the
regulation.

Women are to-day, far more conspicu-
ously than men, the exponents and victims
of that mysterious power we call "Fashion."
As shown in mere helpless imitation of one
another's ideas, customs, methods, there is
not much difference ; in patient acquiescence
with prescribed models of architecture, fur-
niture, Uterature, or anything else; there is
not much difference ; but in personal decora-
tion there is a most conspicuous difference.
Women do to-day submit to more grotesque
ugliness and absurdity than men; and there
are plenty of good reasons for it. Confin-
ing our brief study of fashion to fashion in
dress, let us obsei've why it is that women
wear these fine clothes at all; and why they
change them as they do.

First, and very clearly, the human female
carries the weight of sex decoration, solely
because of her economic dependence on the
male. She alone in nature adds to the bur-
dens of maternity, which she was meant for,
this unnatural burden of ornament, which

"SOCIETV" AMD "FASHION" 173

she was not meant for. Every other female
in the world is suflBciently attractive to the
male without trimmings. He carries the
trimmings, sparing no expense of spread-
ing antlers or trailing plumes; no mon-
strosity of crest and wattles; to win her
favor.

She is only temporarily interested in him.
The rest of the time she is getting her own,
living, and caring for her own young. But
our women get their bread from their hus-
bands, and every other social need. The
woman depends on the man for her position
in life, as well as the necessities of existence.
For herself and for her children she must
win and hold him who is the source of all
supplies. Therefore she is forced to add to
her own natural attractions this "dance of
the seven veils," of the seventeen gowns, of
the seventy-seven hats of gay deUrium.

There are many who think in one syllable,
who say, "women don't dress to please men
— they dress to please themselves — and to
outshine other women." To these I would
suggest a visit to some summer shore resort
during the week and extending over Satur-

174

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

day night. The women have all the week to
please themselves and outshine one another;
but their array on Saturday seems to
indicate the approach of some new force or
attraction.

If all this does not satisfy I would then
call their attention to the well-known fact
that the young damsel previous to marriage
spends far more time and ingenuity in
decoration than she does afterward. This
has long been observed and deprecated by
those who write Advice to Wives, on the
ground that this diflferenee in displeasing to
the husband — that she loses her influence
over him; which is true. But since his own
"society," knowing his weakness, has tied
him to her by law; why should she keep up
what is after all an unnatural exertion?

That excellent magazine "Good House-
keeping" has been running for some months
a rhymed and illustrated story of "Miss
Melissa Clarissa McRae," an extremely
dainty and well-dressed stenographer, who
captured and married a fastidious young
man, her employer, by the force of her arti-
ficial attractions — and then lost his love after

"SOCIETT' AND ''FASHION" 175

marriage by a sudden unaccountable sloven-
liness — ^the same old story.

If this is not enough, let me instance fur-
ther the attitude toward "Fashion" of that
class of women who live most openly and
directly upon the favor of men. These know
their business. To continually attract the
vagrant fancy of the male, nature's bom
"variant," they must not only pile on arti-
ficial charms, but change them constantly.
They do. From the leaders in this profes-
sion comes a steady stream of changing fash-
ions ; the more extreme and bizarre, the more
successful — and because they are successful
they are imitated.

If men did not like changes in fashion be
assured these professional men-pleasers
would not change them, but since Nature's
Variant tires of any face in favor of a new
one, the lady who would hold her sway and
cannot change her face (except in color)
must needs change her hat and gown.

But the Arbiter, the Ruling Cause, he who
not only by choice demands, but as a business
manufactures and supplies this amazing
stream of fashions ; again like Adam blames

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

the woman — for accepting what he both
demands and supplies.

A further proof, if more were needed,
is shown in this ; that in exact proportion as
women grow independent, educated, wise
and free, do they become less submissive to
men-made fashions. Was this improvement
hailed with sympathy and admiration —
crowned with masculine favor?

The attitude of men toward those women
who have so far presumed to *'un-sex" them-
selves is known to all. They hke women to
be foolish, changeable, always newly attrac-
tive; and while women must "attract" for
a living — why they do, that's all.

It is a pity. It is humiliating to any far-
seeing woman to have to recognize this glar-
ing proof of the dependent, degraded posi-
tion of her sex; and it ought to be humilia-
ting to men to see the results of their mas-
tery. These erazily decorated little crea-
tures do not represent Womanhood.

When the artist uses the woman as the
type of every highest ideal; as Justice,
Liberty, Charity, Truth — he does not repre-
sent her trimmed. In any part of the world

"SOCIETY'' AND "FASHION" 177

where women are even in part economically
independent there we find less of the absurd-
ities of fashion. Women who work cannot
be utterly absurd.

But the idle woman, the Queen of Society,
who must please men within their prescribed
bounds; and those of the half -world, who
must please them at any cost — ^these are the
vehicles of fashion.

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

CHAPTER X

LAW AND GOTEBNMENT

IT IS easy to assume that men are natu-
rally the lawmakers and law enforcers,
under the plain historic fact that they
have been such since the beginning of the
patriarchate.

Back of law lies custom and tradition.
Back of government lies the correlative
activity of any organized group. What
group-insects and group-animals evolve un-
consciously and fulfill by their social
instincts, we evolve consciously and fulfill
by arbitrary systems called laws and govern-
ments. In this, as in all other fields of our
action, we must discriminate between the
humanness of the function in process of
development, and the influence of the male
or female upon it. Quite apart from what

LAW AND GOVERNMENT 179

they may like or dislike as sexes, from their
differing tastes and faculties, lies the much

largerMd Qf humm prQgrfiss^-whk£S:
eiiuaUy.ji«jtidpate,

On this plane the evolution of law and
government proceeds somewhat as follows:
The early woman-centered group organ-
ized on maternal lines of common love and
service. The early combinations of men
were first a grouped predacity — organized
hunting; then a grouped belligerency —
organized warfare.

By special development some minds are
able to perceive the need of certain lines of
conduct over others, and to make this clear
to their fellows; whereby, gradually, our
higher social nature establishes rules and pre-
cedents to which we personally agree to sub-
mit. The process of social development is
one of progressive co-ordination.

From independent individual action for
individual ends, up to interdependent social
action for social ends we slowly move; the
"devil" in the play being the old Ego, which
has to be harmonized with the new social
spirit. This social process, like all others,

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

having been in masculine hands, we may
find in it the same marks of one-sided spe-
cialization so visible in our previous studies.

The coersive attitude is essentially male.
In the ceaseless age-old struggle of sex com-
bat he developed the desire to overcome,
which is always stimulated by resistance; and
in this later historic period of his supremacy,
he further developed the habit of dominance
and mastery. We may instance the con-
trast between the conduct of a man when
"in love," as while courting; in which period
he falls into the natural position of his sex
towards the other — namely, that of a wooer;
and his behavior when, with marriage, they
enter the artificial relation of the master
male and sen-ile female. His "instinct of
dominance" does not assert itself during the
earlier period, which was a million times
longer than the latter; it only appears in
the more modern and arbitrary relation.

Among other animals monogamous union
is not accompanied by any such discordant
and unnatural feature. However recent as
this habit is when considered biologically, it
is as old as civilization when we consider it :

LAIV AND GOVERNMENT 181

historically: quite old enough to be a serious
force. Under its pressure we see the legal
systems and forms of government slowly
evolving, the general human growth always
heavily perverted by the special masculine
influence. First we find the mere force of
custom governing us, the mores of the
ancient people. Then comes the gradual
appearance of authority, from the purely
natural leadership of the best hunter or
fighter up through the unnatural mastery of
the patriarch, owning and governing his
wives, children, slaves and cattle, and mak-
ing such rules and regulations as pleased
him.

Our laws as we support them now are
slow, wasteful, cumbrous systems, which
require a special caste to interpret and
another to enforce; wherein the average citi-
zen knows nothing of the law, and cares only
to evade it 'when he can, obey it when he
must. In the household, that stunted, crip-
pled rudiment of the matriarchate, where
alone we can find what is left of the natural
influence of woman, the laws and govern-
ment, so far as she is responsible for them,

182 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

are fairly simple, and bear visible relation
to the common good, which relation is clearly
and persistently taught.

In the larger household of city and state
the educational part of the law is grievously
neglected. It makes no allowance for ignor-
ance. If a man breaks a law of which he
never heard he is not excused therefor; the
penalty rolls on just the same. Fancy a
mother making solemn rules and regulations
for her family, telling the children nothing
about them, and then punishing them when
they disobey the unknown laws I

The use of force is natural to the male;
while as a himian being he must needs legis-
late somewhat in the interests of the com-
munity, as a male being he sees no necessity
for other enforcement than by penalty. To
violently oppose, to fight, to trample to the
earth, to triimiph in loud bellowings of sav-
age joy — ^these are the primitive male in-
stincts; and the perfectly natural social
instincts which leads to peaceful persuasion,
to education, to an easy harmony of action,
are contemptuously ranked as "feminine,"
or as "philanthropic** — ^which is almost as

LAW AND GOVERNMENT 183

bad. "Men need stronger measures" they
say proudly. Yes, but four-fifths of the^ ,
world are women and children 1

As a matter of fact the woman, the
mother, is the first co-ordinator, legislator,
administrator and executive. From the
guarding and guidance of her cubs and kit-
tens up to the longer, larger management
of himian youth, she is the first to consider
group interests and co-relate them.

As a father the male grows to share in
these original feminine functions, and with
us, fatherhood having become socialized
while motherhood has not, he does the best
he can, alone, to do the world's mother-
work in his father way.

In study of any long established human
custom it is very difficult to see it clearly and
dispassionately. Our minds are heavily
loaded with precedent, with race-custom,
with the iron weight called authority. These
heavy forces reach their most perfect expres-
sion in the absolutely masculine field of war-
fare," the absolute authority; the brain-
less, voiceless obedience; the relentless
penalty. Here we have male coercion

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

at its height; law and government wholly
arbitrary. The result is as might be ex-
pected, a fine machine of destruction. But
destruction is not a human process— merely
a male process of eliminating the unfit.

The female process is tg select the fit; her
eUmination is negative and painless.

Greater than either is the human process,
to develop fitness.

Men are at present far more human than
women. Alone upon their self-seized thrones
they have carried as best they might the bur-
dens of the state; and the history of law and
government shows them as changing slowly
but irresistibly in the direction of social
improvement.

The ancient kings were the joyous
apotheosis of masculinity. Power and
Pride were theirs; Limitless Display;
Boundless Self-indulgence ; Irresistible
Authority. Slaves and courtiers bowed be-
fore them, subjects obeyed them, captive
women filled their harems. But the day of
the masculine monarchy is passing, and
the day of the human democracy is coming.
In a democracy law and government both

LAW AND GOVERNMENT 185

change. Laws are no longer imposed oi^
the people by one above them, but are
evolved from the people themselves. How
absurd that the people should not be edu-
cated m the laws they make ; that the trailing
remnants of blind submission should still
becloud their minds and make them bow
down patiently under the absurd pressure
of outgrown tradition 1

Democratic government is no longer an
exercise of arbitrary authority from those
above, but is an organization for public ser-
vice of the people themselves — or will be
when it is really attained.

In this change government ceases to be
compulsion, and becomes agreement; law
ceases to be authority and becomes co-or-
dination. When we learn the rules of
whist or chess we do not obey them because
we fear to be punished if we don't, but be-
cause we want to play the game. The rules •)
of human conduct are for our own happiness (
and service — any child can see that. Every
child will see it when laws are simpUfied,
based on sociology, and taught in schools. ^
A child of ten should be considered grossly

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

uneducated who could not recite the main
features of the laws of his country, state,
and city; and those laws should be so simple
in their principles that a child of ten could
understand them.

Teacher: "What is a tax?"

Child: "A tax is the money we agree to
pay to keep up our common advantages."

Teacher: "Why do we all pay taxes?"

Child: "Because the country belongs to
all of us, and we must all pay our share to
keep it up."

Teacher: "In what proportion do we pay
taxes?"

Child: "In proportion to how much
money we have." {Sotto voce:"Oi course.")

Teacher: "What is it to evade taxes?"

Child: "It is treason." (iSotto voce: "And
a dirty mean trick.")

In masculine administration of the laws
we may follow the instinctive love of battle
down through the custom of "trial by coca-
bat" — only recently outgrown, to our
present method, where each contending
party hires a champion to represent him,
and these fight it out in a wordy war, with

I

LAIV AND GOVERNMENT lar

tricks and devices of complex ingenuity,
enjoying this kind of struggle as they enjoy
all other kinds.

It is the old masculine spirit of govern-
ment as authority which is so slow in adopt-
ing itself to the democratic idea of govern-
ment as service. That it should be a repre-
sentative government they grasp, but repre-
sentative of what? of the common will, they
say; the will of the majority— never think-
ing that it is the common good, the com-
mon welfare, that government should repre-
sent.

It is the inextricable masculininty in our .
idea of government which so revolts at the
idea of women as voters. "To govern:" \
that means to boss, to control, to havel
authority, and that only, to most minds. J
They cannot bear to think of the women as
having control over even their own affairs;
to control is masculine, they assume. See-
ing only self-interest as a natural impulse,
and the ruling powers of the state as a sort
of umpire, an authority to preserve the rules
of the game while men fight it out forever;
they see in a democracy merely a wider

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

range of self interest, and a wider, freer
field to fight in.

The law dictates the rules, the govern-
ment enforces them, but the main business
of hfe, hitherto, has been esteemed as one
long fierce struggle; each man seeking for
liimself. To deliberately legislate for the
service of all the people, to use the govern-
ment as the main engine of that service, is
a new process, wholly human, and difficult
of development imder an androcentric cul-
ture.

Furthermore they put forth those naively
androcentric protests — women cannot fight,
and in case their laws were resisted by men
they could not enforce them — therefore
they should not vote!

What they do not so plainly say, but very
strongly think, is that women should not
share the loot which to their minds is so
large a part of politics.

Here we may trace clearly the social
heredity of male government.

Fix clearly in your mind the first headship
of man — ^the leader of the pack as it were —
the Chief Hunter, Then the second head-

LAW AND GOVERNMENT 189

ship, the Chief Fighter. Then the third
head-ship, the Chief of the Family. Then
the long line of Chiefs and Captains, War-
lords and Landlords, Rulers and Kings.

The Hunter hunted for prey, and got it.
The Fighter enriched himself with the
spoils of the vanquished. The Patriarch
lived on the labor of women and slaves. All
down the ages, from frank piracy and rob-
bery to the measured toU of tribute, ran-
som and indemnity, we see the same natural
instinct of the hunter and fighter. In his
hands the government is a thing to sap and
wreck, to live on. It is his essential impulse
to want something very much; to struggle
and fight for it; to take all he can get.

Set against this the giving love that comes
with motherhood; the endless service that
comes of motherhood; the peaceful admin-
istration in the interest of the family that
comes of motherhood. We prate much of
the family as the unit of the state. If it is — i
why not run the state on that basis? Gov- ', /■
emment by women, so far as it is influenced f ^ ^
by their sex, would be influenced by mother- )
hood; and that would mean care, nurture, '

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

provision, education. We have to go far
down the scale for any instance of organ-
ized motherhood, but we do find it in the

; hymenoptera ; in the overflowing industry,
prosperity, peace and loving service of the

, ant-hill and bee-hive. These are the most
highly socialized types of hfe, next to ours,
and they are feminine types.

We as human beings have a far higher
form of association, with further issues than
mere wealth and propagation of the species.
In this human process we should never for-
get that men are far more advanced than
women, at present. Because of their human-
ness has come all the noble growth of civili-
zation, in spite of their maleness.

As human beings both male and female
stand ahke useful and honorable, and should
in our governments be alike used and hon-
ored; but as creatures of sex, the female is
fitter than the male for administration of
constructive social interests. The change
in governmental processes which marks our
times is a change in principle. Two great
movements convulse the world to-day, the
woman's movement and the labor move-

LAW AND GOVERNMENT 191

ment. Each regards the other as of less
moment than itself. Both are parts of the
same world-process.

We are entering upon a period of social
consciousness. Whereas so far almost all of
us have seen life only as individuals, and
have regarded the growing strength and
riches of the social body as merely so much
the more to fatten on ; now we are beginning
to take intelligent interest in our social
nature, to understand it a little, and to begin
to feel the vast increase of happiness and
power that comes of real Human life.

In this change of systems a government
which consisted only of prohibition and
commands; of tax collecting and making
war; is rapidly giving way to a system
which intelligently manages our common
interests, which is a growing and improving
method of universal service. Here the
socialist is perfectly right in his vision of
the economic welfare to be assured by the
socialization of industry, though that is but
part of the new development; and the in-
dividualist who opposes socialism, crying
loudly for the advantage of "free competi-

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

tion" is but voicing the spirit of the preda-
ceous male.

So with the opposers of the suffrage of
women. They represent, whether men or
women, the male view-point. They see the
women only as a female, utterly absorbed
^ in feminine functions, belittled and ignored
as her long tutelage has made her; and they
see the man as he sees himself, the sole mas-
ter of human affairs for as long as we have
historic record.

This, fortunately, is not long. We can
now see back of the period of his supremacy,
and are beginning to see beyond it. We are
well under way already in a Iiigber stage of
social development, conscious, well-organ-
ized, wisely managed, in which the laws shall
be simple and founded on constructive prin-
ciples instead of being a set of ring-regula-
tions within which people may fight as they
will; and in which the government shall be
recognized in its fuU use; not only the
sternly dominant father, and the wisely ser-
viceable mother, but the real union of all
people to sanely and economically manage
their affairs.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 193

CHAPTER XI

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

THE human concept of Sin has had
its uses, no doubt; and our special
invention of a thing called Punish-
ment has also served a purpose.

Social evolution has worked in many ways
wastefully, and with unnecessary pain, but
it compares very favorably with natural
evolution.

As we grow wiser ; as our social conscious-
ness develops, we are beginning to improve
on nature in more ways than one ; a part of
the same great process, but of a more highly
sublimated sort.

Nature shows a world of varied and
changing environment. Into this comes
Life — ^pushing and spreading in every direc-
tion. A pretty hard time Life has of it. In
the first place it is dog eat dog in every direc-

194 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

tion; the joy of the hunter and the most
unjoyous fear of the hunted.

But quite outside of tliis essential danger,
the environment waits, grim and unappeas-
able, and continuously destroys the innocent
myriads who fail to meet the one requirement
of life — Adaptation. So we must not be too
severe in self-condemnation when we see
how foolish, cruel, crazily wasteful, is our
attitude toward crime and punishment.

We become socially conscious largely
through pain, and as we begin to see how
much of the pain is wholly of our own caus-
ing we are overcome with shame. But the
right way for society to face its past is the
same as for the individual; to see where it
was wrong, and stop it- — but to waste no
time and no emotion over past misdeeds.

What is our present state as to crime? It
is pretty had. Some say it is worse than it
used to be; others that it is better. At any
rate it is bad enough, and a disgrace to our
civilization. We have murders by the
thousand and thieves by the milUon, of all
kinds and sizes; we have what we tenderly
call "immorality," from the "errors of

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 195

youth" to the sodden grossness of old age;
married, single, and mixed. We have all
the old kinds of wickedness and a lot of new
ones, mitil one marvels at the purity and
power of human nature, that it should carry
so much disease and stiU grow on to higher
things.

Also we have punishment still with us ;
private and public; applied like a rabbit's
foot, with as little regard to its efficacy. Does
a child offend? Punish it! Does a woman
offend? Punish her! Does a man offend?
Punish him! Does a group offend? Punish
them!

'What for?" some one suddenly asks.
To make them stop doing itl"
'But they have done it!"
To make them not do it again, then."
"But they do it again — and worse."
To prevent other people's doing it, then."
'But it does not prevent them — ^the
crime keeps on. What good is your punish-
ment?"

What indeed I

What is the application of punishment to
crime? Its base, its prehistoric base, is

if

(CI

<(l

196 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

simple retaliation; and this is by no means
wholly male, let us freely admit. The instinct
of resistance, of opposition, of retaliation,
lies deeper than life itself. Its underlying
law is the law of physics— action and reac-
tion are equal. Life's expression of this law
is perfectly natural, hut not always profit-
able. Hit your hand on a stone wall, and
the stone wall hits your hand. Very good;
you learn that stone walls are hard, and
govern yourself accordingly.

Conscious young humanity observed and
philosophized, congratulating itself on its
discernment. "A man hits me — I hit the
man a little harder — then he won't do it
again." Unfortunately he did do it again —
a little harder still. The effort to hit harder
carried on the action and reaction till society,
hitting hardest of all, set up a system of
legal punishment, of unlimited severity. It
imprisoned, it mutilated, it tortured, it
killed ; it destroyed whole families, and razed
contumelious cities to the ground.

Therefore all crime ceased, of course ?
No? But crime was mitigated, surely I Per-
haps. This we have proven at last; that

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 197

crime does not decrease in proportion to
the severest punishment. Little by little we
have ceased to raze the cities, to wipe out
the families, to cut off the ears, to torture;
and our imprisonment is changing from slow
death and insanity to a form of attempted
improvement.

But punishment as a principle remains in
good standing, and is still the main reliance
where it does the most harai— in the rearing
of children. "Spare the rod and spoil the
child" remains in belief, unmodified by the
millions of children spoiled by the unspared
rod.

The breeders of racehorses have learned
better, hut not the breeders of children. Our
trouble is simply the lack of intelligence. We
face the babyish error and the hideous crime
in exactly the same attitude.

"This person has done something offen-
sive."

Yes? — and one waits eagerly for the first
question of the rational mind — but does not
hear it. One only hears, "Punish him!"

What is the first question of the rational
mind?

198 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

"Why?"

Human beings are not first causes. They
do not evolve conduct out of nothing. The
child does this, the man does that, because
of something; because of many things. If
we do not like the way people behave, and
wish them to behave better, we should, if
we are rational beings, study the conditions
that produce the conduct.

The connection between our archaic sys-
tems of punishment and our androcentric
culture is two-fold. The impidse of resist-
ance, while, as we have seen, of the deepest
natural origin, is expressed more strongly
in the male than in the female. The tendency
to hit back and hit harder has been fostered
in bim by sex-combat till it has become of
great intensity. The habit of authority too,
as old as our history; and the cumulative
weight of all rehgions and systems of law
and government, have furthermore built up
and intensified the spirit of retaliation and
vengeance.

They have even deified this concept, in
ancient religions, crediting to God the evil
passions of men. As the small boy recited:

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 199

"Vengeance. A mean desire to get even with
your enemies: * Vengeance is mine saith the
Lord — I will repay/ "

The Christian religion teaches better
things; better than its expositors and
upholders have ever understood — ^much less
practised.

The teaching of "Love your enemies, do
good unto them that hate you, and serve
them that despitef ully use you and persecute
you," has too often resulted, when practised
at all, in a sentimental negation; a patheti-
cally useless attitude of non-resistance. You
might as well base a religion on a feather
pillow 1

The advice given was active: direct; con-
crete. "Love I" Love is not non-resistance.
"Do goodl" Doing good is not non-resist-
ance. "Serve!" Service is not non-resist-
ance.

Again we have an overwhelming proof of
the far-reaching effects of our androcentric
culture. Consider it once more. Here is
one by nature combative and desirous, and
not by nature intended to monopolize the
management of his species. He assumes to

300 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

be not only the leader, but the whole thing —
to be humanity itself, and to see in woman
as Grant Allen so clearly put it "!Not only
not the race ; she is not even half the race, but
a sub-species, told off for purposes of repro-
duction merely."

Under this monstrous assumption, his
sex-attributes wholly identified with his
human attributes, and overshadowing them,
he has imprinted on every human institu-
tion the tastes and tendencies of the male.
As a male he fought, as a male human being
he fought more, and deified fighting; and
in a culture based on desire and combat,
loud with strident self-expression, there
could be but slow acceptance of the more
human methods urged by Christianity. "It
is a religion for slaves and women!" said
the warrior of old. (Slaves and women
were largely the same thing.) "It is a
religion for slaves and women" says the
advocate of the Superman.

Well? Who did the work of all the
ancient world? Who raised the food and
garnered it and cooked it and served it?
Who built the houses, the temples, the

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 201

aqueducts, the city wall? Who made the
furniture, the tools, the weapons, the uten-
sils, the ornaments — ^made them strong and
beautiful and useful? Who kept the human
race going, somehow, in spite of the constant
hideous waste of war, and slowly built up
the real industrial civilization behind that
gory show? — ^Why just the slaves and the
women.

A religion which had attractions for the
real human type is not therefore to be
utterly despised by the male.

In modem history we may watch with
increasing ease the slow, sure progress of
our growing humanness beneath the weak-
ening shell of an all-male dominance. And
in this field of what begins in the nursery
as "discipline," and ends on the scaffold as
"punishment," we can clearly see that
blessed change.

What is the natural, the human attribute?
What does this "Love," and "Do good,"
and "Serve" mean? In the blundering old
church, still androcentric, there was a great
to-do to carry out this doctrine, in elaborate
symbolism. A set of beggars and cripples.

202 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

gathered for the occasion, was exhibited, and
kings and cardinals went solemnly through
the motions of serving them. As the Eng-
lish schoolboy phrased it, "Thomas Becket
washed the feet of leopards."

Service and love and doing good must
\ always remain side issues in a male world.
J Service and love and doing good are the
, spirit of motherhood, and the essence of
\ human life.

Human life is service, and is not combat.
^j- There you have the nature of the change
now upon us.

What has the male mind made of Chris-
tianity?

Desire— to save one's own soul. Combat
— with the Devil. Self-expression — the
whole gorgeous outpouring of pageant and
display, from the jewels of the high priest's
breastplate to the choir of mutilated men to
praise a male Deity no woman may so serve.
What kind of mind can imagine a kind of
god who would Kke a eunuch better than a
woman?

For woman they made at last a place —

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 203

the usual place— of renunciation, sacrifice
and serv-ice, the Sisters of Mercy and their
kind ; and in that loving service the woman
soul has been content, not yearning for
cardinal's cape or bishop's mitre.

All this is changing — changing fast.
Everywhere the churches are broadening out
into more service, and the service broadening
out beyond a little group of widows and
fatherless, of sick and in prison, to embrace
its true field — all human Ufe. In this new
attitude, how shall we face the problems of
crime?

Thus: "It is painfully apparent that a
certain percentage of our people do not
function properly. They perform anti-
social acts. Why? What is the matter
with them?"

Then the heart and mind of society is
applied to the question, and certain results
are soon reached; others slowly worked
toward.

First result. Some persons are so morally
diseased that they must have hospital treat-
ment. The world's last prison will be simply
I hospital for moral incurables. They must

2<J4

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

by no means reproduce their kind — that can
be attended to at once. Some are morally
diseased, but may be cured, and the best
powers of society will be used to cure them.
Some are only morally diseased because of
the conditions in which they are born and
reared, and here society can save millions at
once.

An inteUigent society will no more neglect
its children than an intelligent mother will
neglect her children; and will see as clearly
that ill-fed, ill-dressed, ill-taught and vilely
associated little ones must grow up gravely
injiu-ed.

As a matter of fact we make our crop of
criminals, just as we make our idiots, blind,
crippled, and generally defective. Every-
one is a baby first, and a baby is not a crim-
inal, unless we make it so. It never would
be — in right conditions. Sometimes a per-
vert is bom, as sometimes a two-headed calf
is bom, but they are not common.

The older, simpler forms of crime we may
prevent with ease and despatch, but how of
the new ones?^ — big, terrible, far-reaching,
wide-spread crimes, for which we have as

I
I

I

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 205

yet no names; and before which our old
system of anti-personal punishment falls
helpless? What of the crimes of poisoning
a community with bad food; of defiling the
water; of blackening the air; of stealing
whole forests? What of the crimes of work-
ing little children; of building and renting
tenements that produce crime and physical
disease as well? What of the crime of living
on the wages of fallen women — of hiring
men to ruin innocent young girls; of holding
them enslaved and selling them for profit?
( These things are only "misdemeanors" in a
man-made world I)

And what about a crime like this; to use
the pubUc press to lie to the public for pri-
vate ends? No name yet for this crime;
much less a penalty.

iVnd this: To bring worse than leprosy to
an innocent clean wife who loves and trusts
you?

Or this: To knowingly plant {mison in an
unborn child?

No names for these; no "penalties"; no
conceivable penalty that could touch them.

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

The whole punishment system falls to the
ground before the huge mass of evil that
confronts us. If we saw a procession of air
ships flying over a city and dropping bombs,
should we rush madly off after each one cry-
ing, "Catch him I Punish him!" or should we
try to stop the procession?

The time is coming when the very word
"crime" will be disused, except in poems
and orations; and "punishment," both word
and deed, be obliterated. We are beginning
to learn a little of the nature of humanity;
its goodness, its beauty, its lovingness; and
to see that even its stupidity is only due to
our foolish old methods of education.

It is not new power, new light, new hope
•^ that we need, but to understand what aiU us.

We know enough now, we care enough
now, we are strong enough now, to make the
whole world a thousand fold better in a gen-
eration; but we are shackled, chained,
blinded, by old false notions. The ideas of
the past, the sentiments of the past, the atti-
] tude and prejudice of the past, are in our
( way; and among them none more univer-
sally mischievous than this great body of

I

I

CktME AND PUNISHMENT 207

ideas and sentiment, prejudices and habits,
which make up the offensive network of the
androcentric culture.

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

CHAPTER Xn

POLITICS AND WARFARE

I Go to my old dictionary, and find;
"Politics, 1. The science of govern-
ment; that part of ethics which has to
do with the regulation and govenmient of a
nation or state, the preservation of its safety,
peace and prosperity ; the defence of its exist-
ence and rights against foreign control or
conquest; the augmentation of its strength
and resources, and the protection of its citi-
zens in their rights; with the preservation
and improvement of their morals. 2. The
management of political parties; the ad-
vancement of candidates to office; in a bad
sense, artful or dishonest management to
secure the success of political measiu-es or
party schemes, political trickery."

From present day experience we might

POLITICS AND WARFARE S09

add, 3. Politics, practical; The art of
organizing and handling men in large num-
hers, manipxilating votes, and, in especial,
appropriating public wealth.

We can easily see that the "science of gov-
ernment" may be divided into "pure" and
"applied" like other sciences, hut that it is
"a part of ethics" will be news to many
minds.

Yet why not ? Ethics is the science of con-
duct, and politics is merely one field of con-
duct; a very common one. Its connection
with warfare in this chapter is perfectly legi-
timate in view of the history of politics on
the one hand, and the imperative modern
issues which are to-day opposed to this estab-
lished combination.

There are many to-day who hold that
politics need not be at all connected with
warfare; and others who hold that politics
is warfare from start to finish.

In order to dissociate the two ideas com-
pletely, let us give a paraphrase of the
above definition, applying it to domestic
management — that part of ethics which has
to do with the regulation and government of

210 THE SfAsMADE WORLD

a family; the preserration of its safety,
peace and prosperity; the defense of its
existence and rights against any stranger's
interference or control; the augmentation of
its strength and resources, and the protec-
tion of its members in their rights; with the
preservation and improvement of their
morals.

All this is simple enough, and in no way
masculine; neither is it feminine, save In
this; that the tendency to care for, defend
and manage a group, is in its ori^n
maternal.

In every human sense, however, politics
has left its maternal base far in the back-
i/ ground; and as a field of study and of action
is as well adapted to men as to women.
There is no reason whatever why men should
not develop great ability in this department
of ethics, and gradually learn how to pre-
serve the safety, peace and prosperity of
their nation; together with those other ser-
vices as to resources, protection of citizens,
and improvement of morals.

Men, as human beings, are capable of the
noblest devotion and efficiency in these mat-

POLITICS AND WARFARE 211

ters, and have often shown them; but their
devotion and efficiency have been marred in
this, as in so many other fields, by the con-
stant obtrusion of an ultra-masculine tend-
ency, rz

In warfare, per se, we find maleness in its
absurdest extremes. Here is to be studied
the whole gamut of basic masculinity, from
the initial instinct of combat, through every
form of glorious ostentation, with the loud-
est possible accompaniment of noise.

Primitive warfare had for its climax the
possession of the primitive prize, the female.
Without dogmatising on so remote a period,
it may be suggested as a fair hypotliesis that
this was the very origin of our organized
raids. We certainly find war before there
was property in land, or any other property
to tempt aggressors. Women, however,
I there were always, and when a specially
' androcentric tribe had reduced its supply of
women by cruel treatment, or they were not
born in sufficient numbers, owing to hard
conditions, men must needs go farther afield
after other women. Then, since the men of
the other tribes naturally objected to losing

SI2

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

their main labor supply and comfort, there
was war.

Thus based on the sex impulse, it gave
full range to the combative instinct, and
further to that thirst for vocal exultation so
exquisitely male. The proud beUowings of
the conquering stag, as he trampled on his
prostrate rival, found higher expression in
the "triumphs" of old days, when the con-
quering warrior returned to his home, with
victims chained to his chariot wheels, and
trumpets braying.

When property became an appreciable
factor in life, warfare took on a new signifi-
cance. What was at first mere destruction,
in the effort to defend or obtain some hunt-
ing ground or pasture; and, always, to secure
the female; now coalesced with the acquisi-
tive instinct, and the long black ages of
predatory warfare closed in upon the world.

Where the earliest foim exterminated, the
later enslaved, and took tribute; and for cen-
tury upon century the "gentleman adven-
turer," i. e., the primitive male, greatly pre-
ferred to acquire wealth by the simple old

POLITICS AND WARFARE

process of taking it, to any form of produc-
tive industry.

We have been much misled as to warfare
by our androcentric literature. With a his-
tory which recorded nothing else; a litera-
ture which praised and an art which exalted
it; a religion which called its central power
"the God of Battles" — never the God of
Workshops, mind you ! — with a whole com-
plex social structure man-pi'ejudiced from
center to circumference, and giving highest
praise and honor to the Soldier; it is still
hard for us to see what warfare really is in
human life.

Some day we shall have new histories writ- \
ten, histories of world progress, showing the !
slow uprising, the development, the interser- \
vice of the nations ; showing the faint beau-
tiful dawn of the larger spirit of world-con-
sciousness, and all its benefiting growth.

We shall see people softening, learning,
rising; see life lengthen with the possession
of herds, and widen in rich prosperity with
agriculture. Then industry, blossoming,
fruiting, spreading wide; art, giving light
and joy; the intellect developing with com-

214 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

panionship and human intercourse; the whole
spreading tree of social progress, the trunk
of which is specialized industry, and the
branches of which comprise every least and
greatest line of human activity and enjoy-
ment. This growing tree, springing up
wherever conditions of peace and prosperity
gave it a chance, we shall see continually
hewed down to the very root by war.

To the later historian will appear through-
out the ages, like some Hideous Fate, some
Curse, some predetermined check, to drag
down all our hope and joy and set life for-
ever at its first steps over again, this Red
Plague of War.

The instinct of combat, between males,
worked advantageously so long as it did not
injure the female or the young. It is a per-
fectly natural instinct, and therefore per-
fectly right, in its place; but its place is in a
pre-patriarchal era. So long as the animal
mother was free and competent to care for
herself and her young; then it was an advan-
tage to have "the best man win;" that is the
best stag or lion ; and to have the vanquished

POLITICS AND WARFARE 215

die, or live in sulky celibacy, was no disad-
vantage to any one but himself.

Humanity is on a stage above this plan.
The best man in the social structiu*e is not
always the huskiest. When a fresh horde
of ultra-male savages swarmed down upon
a prosperous young civilization. kiUed oflF
the more civilized males and appropriated
the more civilized females; they did, no
doubt, bring in a fresh physical impetus to
the race; but they destroyed the civiUzation.

The reproduction of perfectly good sav- -
ages is not the main business of human-
ity. Its business is to grow, socially; to de-
velop, to improve; and warfare, at its best,
retards human progress; at its worst, ob-
literates it.

Combat is not a social process at all; it is
a physical process, a subsidiary sex process,
purely masculine, intended to improve the
species by the elimination of the unfit.
Amusingly enough, or absurdly enough;
when applied to society, it eliminates the fit,
and leaves the unfit to perpetuate the race!

We require, to do our organized fighting,
a picked lot of vigorous young males, the

21fi THE MAN-MADE WORLD

fittest we can find. The too old or too
young; the sick, crippled, defective; are all
left behind, to marry and be fathers; while
the pick of the country, physically, is sent
off to oppose the pick of another country,
andkiU— kiU— kiUI

Observe the resiJt on the population! In
the first place the balance is broken — there
are not enough men to go around, at home ;
many women are left unmated. In primi-
tive warfare, where women were promptly
enslaved, or, at the best, polygamously mar-
ried, this did not greatly matter — to the
population; but as civilization advances and
monogamy obtains, whatever eugenic bene-
fits may once have sprung from warfare are
completely lost, and all its injuries remain.

In what we innocently call "civilized war-
fare" (we might as well speak of "civilized
cannibalism 1" ) , this steady elimination of the
fit leaves an ever lowering standard of par-
entage at home. It makes a widening mar-
gin of what we call "surplus women," mean-
ing more than enough to be monogamously
married; and these women, not being eco-
nomically independent, drag steadily upon

POLITICS AND WARFARE 317

the remaining men, postponing marriage,
and increasing its burdens.

The birth rate is lowered in quantity by
the lack of husbands, and lowered in quality
both by the destruction of superior stock,
and by the wide dissemination of those dis-
eases which invariably accompany the wife-
lessness of the segregated males who are told
off to perform our mihtary functions.

The external horrors and wastes of war-
fare we are all famihar with: A. It arrests
industry and all progress. B. It destroys the
fruits of industry and progress. C. It weak-
ens, hurts and kills the combatants. D. It
lowers the standard of the non-combatants.
Even the conquering nation is heavily in-
jured; the conquered sometimes extermi-
nated, or at least absorbed by the victor.
This masculine selective process, when ap-
I phed to nations, does not produce the same
' result as when appUed to single opposing
animals. When little Greece was overcome
it did not prove that the victors were su-
perior, nor promote human interests in any
way; it injured them.

The "stern arbitrament of war" may \

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

I'j prove which of two peoples is the better
1 fighter, but it does not prove it therefore the
J I fittest to survive.

VH- Beyond all these more or less obvious

evils, comes a further result, not enough
recognized; the psychic efi'ects of military
standard of thought and feeling.

Remember that an androcentric culture
has always exempted its own essential ac-
I'tivities from the restraints of ethics, — -"All's
fair in love and war!" Deceit, trickery, ly-
ing, every kind of skulking underhand effort
to get information; ceaseless endeavor to
outwit and overcome "the enemy"; these,
with cruelty and destruction are character-
istic of the miUtary process; as well as the
much prized virtues of courage, endurance
and loyalty, personal and public.

Also classed as a virtue, and unquestion-
ably such from the mihtary point of view,
is that prime factor in making and keeping
an army, obedience.

See how the effect of this artificial main-
tenance of early mental attitudes acts on
later development. True human progress
requires elements quite other than these

POLITICS AND WARFARE 219

successful warfare made one nation unques-
tioned master of the earth, its social progress
would not he promoted by that event. The
rude hordes of Genghis Khan swarmed over
Asia and into Europe, but remained rude
hordes; conquest is not dvilization, nor any
part of it.

When the northern trihes-men over-
whelmed the Roman culture they paralyzed
progress for a thousand years or so; set back
the clock by that much. So long as aU
Europe was at war, so long the arts and
sciences sat still, or struggled in hid comers
to keep their light alive.

When warfare itself ceases, the physical, >
social and psychic results do not cease. Our >
whole culture is still hag-ridden by military /,
ideals. ^tir:^

Peace congresses have begun to meet,
peace societies write and talk, but the monu-
ments to soldiers and sailors (naval sailors
I of course) , still go up, and the tin soldier
L remains a popular toy. We do not see
boxes of tin carpenters by any chance; tin
farmers, weavers, shoemakers; we do not
b write our "boys' books" about the real bene-

320 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

factors and servers of society; the adven-
turer and destroyer remains the idol of an
androcentric culture.
; In polities the military ideal, the military
; processes, are so predominant as to almost
' monopolize "that part of ethics."

The science of government, the plain
wholesome business of managing a com-
munity for its own good; doing its work, ad-
vancing its prosperity, improving its morals
— this is frankly understood and accepted
as A Fight from start to finish. Marshall
your forces and try to get in, tlus is the
political campaign. When you are in, fight
to stay in, and to keep the other fellow out.
Fight for your own hand, like an animal
fight for your master like any hired bravo;
fight always for some desired "victory" —
and "to the victors belong the spoils."

This is not by any means the true nature
of politics. It is not even a fair picture of
pohtics to-day; in which man, the human
being, is doing noble work for humanity
but it is the effect of man, the male, on
pohtics.

Life, to the "male mind" (we have heard

POLITICS AND WARFARE 321

enough of the "female mind" to use the
analogue 1) is a fight, and his ancient mili- [
tary institutions and processes keep up the ,
delusion.

As a matter of fact life is growth. ,
Growth comes naturally, by multiphcation
of cells, and requires three factors to pro-
mote it; nourishment, use, rest. Combat is
a minor incident of life; belonging to low
levels, and not of a developing influence
socially.

The science of politics, in a civilized com-
munity, should have by this time a fine ac-
cumulation of siraphfied knowledge for dif-
fusion in pubUc schools ; a store of practical
experience in how to promote social ad-
vancement most rapidly, a progressive econ-
omy and ease of administration, a simplicity
in theory and visible benefit in practice, such
as should make every child an eager and
serviceable citizen.

What do we find, here in America, in the
field of "politics?"

We find first a party system which is the
technical arrangement to carry on a fight.
It is perfectly conceivable that a flourishing

S28 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

democratic government be carried on imih-
out any parties at all; public functionaries
being elected on their merits, and each pro-
posed measure judged on its merits; though
this sounds impossible to the androcentric
mind.

"There has never been a democracy with-
out factions and parties!" is protested.

[There has never been a democracy, so far,
— only an androcracy.

A group composed of males alone, na-
turally divides, opposes, fights; even a male
church, under the most rigid rule, has its
secret undercurrents of antagonism.

"It is the hmnan heart!" is again pro-
tested. No, not essentially the human heart,
but the male heart. This is so well recog-
nized by men in general, that, to their minds,
in this mingled field of politics and warfare,
women have no place.

In "civilized warfare" they are, it is true,
allowed to trail along and practice their
feminine function of nursing; but this is
no part of war proper, it is rather the be-
ginning of the end of war. Sometime it will
strike our "funny spot," these strenuous ef-

»

POLITICS AND WARFARE 233

forts to hurt and destroy, and these accom-
panying efforts to heal and save.

But in our politics there is not even pro-
vision for a nursing corps; women are abso-
lutely excluded.

"They cannot play the game!" cries the
practical politician. There is loud talk of
the defilement, the "dirty pool" and its re-
sultant darkening of fair reputations, the
total unfitness of lovely woman to take part
in "the rough and tumble of politics."

In other words men have made a human ^
institution into an ultra-masculine perform- j
ance ; and, quite rightly, feel that women 1
could not take part in politics as men do.j
That it is not necessary to fulfill this human
custom in so masculine a way does not occur
to them. Few men can overlook the limi-
tations of their sex and see the truth; that
this business of taking care of our common '
affairs is not only equally open to women
and men, but that women are distinctly
needed in it.

Anyone will admit that a government
wholly in the hands of women would be
helped by the assistance of men; that a

THE MAM-MADE WORLD

gynaecocracy must, of its own nature, be
one-sided. Yet it is hard to win reluctant
admission of the opposite fact; that an an-
drocracy must of its own nature be one-
sided also, and would be greatly improved
by the participation of the other sex.

The inextricable confusion of politics and
warfare is part of the stumbling block in
the minds of men. As they see It, a nation
is primarily a fighting organization; and its
principal husiness is offensive and defensive
warfare; therefore the ultimatum with which
they oppose the demand for political equal-
- ity — "women cannot fight, therefore they

cannot vote."

I Fighting, when all is said, is to them the

I real business of life; not to be ahle to fight

. is to be quite out of the running; and ability

to solve our growing mass of public

problems ; questions of health, of education,

of morals, of economies; weighs naught

against the ability to kill.

This naive assumption of supreme value
in a process never of the first importance;
and increasingly injurious as society pro-
gresses, would be laughable if it were not

POLITICS AND WARFARE 295

for its evil effects. It acts and reacts upon
us to our hurt. Positively, we see the ill
effects already touched on; the evils not only
of active war ; hut of the spirit and methods
of war; idealized, inculcated and practiced
in other social processes. It tends to make
each man-managed nation an actual or po-
tential fighting organization, and to give us,
instead of civilized peace, that "balance of <
power" which is like the counted time in the ,
prize ring — only a rest between combats. •

It leaves the weaker nations to be con-
quered" and "annexed" just as they used
to be; with "preferential tariffs" instead of
tribute. It forces upon each the burden of
armament; upon many the dreaded con-
scription ; and continually lowers the world's
resources in money and in life.

Similarly in politics, it adds to the legiti-

I mate expenses of governing the illegitimate
expenses of fighting; and must needs have a
"spoils system" by which to pay its mer-

I cenaries.

In carrying out the public policies the
wheels of state are continually clogged by

k the "opposition"; always an opposition on

/

226 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

one side or the other; and this slow wiggling
uneven progress, through shorn victories
and haggling concessions, is held to be the
proper and only political method.

"Women do not understand polities," we '
are told; "Women do not care for politics;"
"Woman are unfitted for politics."

It is frankly inconceivable, from the an-
drocentric view-point, that nations can live
in peace together, and be friendly and ser-
viceable as persons are. It is inconceivable
also, that, in the management of a nation,
honesty, efficiency, wisdom, experience and
love could work out good results without
any element of combat.

The "ultimate resort" is still to arms.
"The wiU of the majority" is only respected
on account of the guns of the majority. We
."have but a partial civilization, heavily modi-
'ified to sex — the male sex.

INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 227

CHAPTER XIII

nroUSTRT AND ECONOMICS

THE forest of Truth, on the subject
of industry and economics, is dif-
ficult to see on account of the trees.
We have so many Facts on this subject;
so many Opinions; so many Traditions and
Habits ; and the pressure of Immediate Con-
r ditions is so intense upon us all; that it is
' not easy to form a clear space in one's mind
and consider the field fairly.

Possibly the present treatment of the sub-
ject will appeal most to the minds of those
I who know least about it; such as the Aver-
I age Woman. To her, industry is a day-
[ long and lifelong duty, as well as a natural
npulse; and economics means going with-
out things. To such untrained but also un-

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

prejudiced minds it should be easy to show
the main facts on these lines.

Let us dispose of Economics first, as hav-
ing a solemn scientific appearance.

Physical Economies treats of the internal
affairs of the body; the whole machinery and
how it works; all organs, members, func-
tions; each last and littlest capillary and
leucocyte, are parts of that "economy."

Nature's "economy" is not in the least
"economical." The waste of life, the waste
of material, the waste of time and effort,
are prodigious, yet she achieves her end as
we see.

Domestic Economics covers the whole
care and government of the household; the
maintenance of peace, health, order, and
morality ; the care and nourishment of chil-
dren as far as done at home; the entire man-
agement of the home, as well as the spending
and saving of money; are included in it.
Saving is the least and poorest part of it;
especially as in mere abstinence from needed
things; most especially when this abstinence
is mainly "Mother's." How best to spend I
time, strength, love, care, labor, knowledge.

INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 229

and money — this should be the main study
in Domestic Economics.

Social, or, as they are used to call it.
Political Economics, covers a larger, but not
essentially different field. A family consists
of people, and the Mother is their natural
manager. Society consists of people — the
same people — only more of them. All the
people who are members of Society are also
members of families — except some incu-
bated orphans maybe. Social Economics
covers the whole care and management of
the people, the maintenance of peace and
health and order and morality; the care of
children, as far as done out of the home; as
well as the spending and saving of the pubUc
money — all these are included in it.

This great business of Social Economics

I is at present little understood and most

I poorly managed, for this reason; we ap-

I proach it from an individual point of view;

seeking not so much to do our share in the

common service, as to get our personal profit

from the common wealth. Where the whole

family labors together to harvest fruit and

store it for the winter, we have le^timate

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

Domestic Economics: but where one mem-
ber takes and hides a lot for himself, to the
exclusion of the others, we have no Domestic
EconomiciS at all — merely individual selfish-
ness.

In Social Economics we have a large, but
simple problem. Here is the earth, our
farm. Here are the people, who own the
earth. How can the most advantage to the
most people be obtained from the earth with
the least labor? That is the problem of
Social Economics.

Looking at the world as if you held it
in your hands to study and discuss, what do
we find at present?

We find people hving too thickly for
health and comfort in some places, and too
thinly in others ; we find most people work-
ing too hard and too long at honest labor;
some people working with damaging in-
tensity at dishonest labor; and a few
wretched paupers among the rich and poor,
degenerate Idlers who do not work at all,
the scimi and the dregs of Society,
work far too hard for what we do gel.
the comfort out of life we easily could; and

\

INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 231

work far too hard for what we do get. i
Moreover, there is no peace, no settled se-
curity. No man is sure of his living, jio mat-
ter how hard he works, a thousand things
may occur to deprive him of his joh, or his
income. In our time there is great excite-
ment along this line of study; and more than
one proposition is advanced whereby we
may improve most, notably instanced in the
world-covering advance of Sociahsm.

In our present study the principal fact
to be exhibited is the influence of a male cul-
ture upon Social Economics and Industry.

Industry, as a department of Social Eco-
nomics, is little understood. Heretofore we
have viewed this field from several wholly
erroneous positions. From the Hebrew
(and wholly androcentric) religious teach-
ing, we have regarded labor as a curse.

Nothing could be more absurdly false.
Labor is not merely a means of supporting
human life— it is human life. Imagine &■
race of beings living without labor! Theyj
must be the rudest savages.

Hunian work consists in specialized in-
dustry and the exchange of its products;

THE MAM-MADE WORLD

and without it is no civilization. As indus-
try develops, civilization develops; peace ex-
pands; wealth increases; science and art help
on the splendid total. Productive industry,
and its concomitant of distributive industry
cover the major field of human life.

If our industry was normal, what should
we see?

A world full of healthy, happy people;
each busily engaged in what he or she most
enjoyed doing. Normal Speciahzation, like
all our voluntary processes, is accompanied
by keen pleasure; and any check or inter-
ruption to it gives pain and injury. Who-
soever works at what he loves is weU and
happy. Whosoever works at what he does
not love is ill and miserable. It is very bad
economics to force unwilling industry. That
is the weakness of slave labor; and of wage
labor also where there is not full industrial
education and freedom of choice.

Under normal conditions we should see
well developed, well trained specialists hap-
pily engaged in the work they most enjoyed ;
for reasonable hours (any work, or play
either, becomes injurious if done too long) ;

INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 233

and as a consequence the whole output of the
world would be vastly improved, not only in
quantity but in quality.

Plain are the melancholy facts of what we
do see. Following that pitiful conception^
of labor as a curse, comes the very old and '.
androcentric habit of despising it as belong- i
ing to women, and then to slaves.

As a matter of fact industry is in its ori-
gin feminine; that is, maternal. It is the
overflowing fountain of mother-love and
mother-power which first prompts the hu-
man race to labor; and for long ages men
performed no productive industry at aU; be-
ing merely hunters and fighters.

It is this lack of natural instinct for labor
in the male of our species, together with the
ideas and opinions based on that lack, and
voiced by him in his many writings, religious
and other, which have given to the world its
false estimate of this great function, human
work. That which is our very life, our
greatest joy, our road to all advancement,
we have scorned and oppressed; so that
"working people," the "working classes,"

I

234 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

"having to work," etc., are to this day
spoken of with contempt. Perhaps drones
speak so among themselves of the "working
bees!"

Normally, widening out from the moth-
er's careful and generous service in the fam-
ily, to careful, generous service in the world,
we should find labor freely given, with love
and pride.

Ahnormally, crushed tmder the bm-den of
androcentric^corn and prejudice, we have
laborgiKflTgingly produced under pressure
of necessity; labor of slaves under fear of the
whip, or of wage-slaves, one step higher, un-
der fear of want. Long ages wherein hunt-
ing and fighting were the only manly occu-
pations, have left their heavy impress. The
predacious instinct and the combative in-
stinct weigh down and disfigure our eco-
nomic development. What Veblen calls
"the instinct of workmansliip" grows on,
slowly and irresistibly; but the malign fea-
tures of our industrial life are distinctly an-
drocentric: the desire to get, of the hunter;
interfering with the desire to give, of the
mother; the desire to overcome an antagonist

INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 235

' — originally masculine, interfering with the
desire to serve and benefit — originally femi-
nine.

Let the reader keep in mind that as hu-
man beings, men are able to over-live their
masculine natures and do noble service to
the world; also that as human beings they
are to-day far more highly developed than
women, and doing far more for the world.
The point here brought out is that as males ,
their unchecked supremacy has resulted in \
an abnormal predominance of masculine im- j
pulses in our human processes; and that this
predominance has been largely injurious. ~-'

As it happens, the distinctly feminine or
maternal impulses are far more nearly in
Une with human progress than are those of
the male; wliich makes her exclusion from
human functions the more mischievous.

Our current teachings in the infant sci-
ence of Political Economy are naively mas-
culine. They assume as unquestionable that
"the economic man" will never do anything
unless he has to; will only do it to escape
pain or attain pleasure; and will, inevitably,
take all he can get, and do all he can to out-

236 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

wit, overcome, and if necessary destroy his
antagonist.

Always the antagonist; to the male mind
an antagonist is essential to progress, to all
achievement. He has planted that root-
thought in all the human world; from that
old hideous idea of Satan, "Tlie Adversary,"
down to the competitor in business, or the
boy at the head of the class, to be supersedi
by another.

Therefore, even in science, "the struggle
for existence" is the dominant law — to the
male mind, with the "survival of the fittest'
and "the elimination of the unfit."

Therefore in industry and economics
find always and everywhere the antagonist;
the necessity for somebody or something to
be overcome — else why make an effort? If
you have not the incentive of reward, or the
incentive of combat, why work? "Competi-
tion is the life of trade."

Thus the Economic Man.

But how about the Economic Woman?

To the androcentric mind she does not
exist — ^women are females, and that's all;

the
de<^

fgle
the

3St"

! we^

■3
(

e

1

INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 237

their working abilities are limited to per-
sonal service.

That it would be possible to develop in-
dustry to far greater heights, and to find in
social economics a simple and beneficial
process for the promotion of human life and
prosperity, imder any other impulse than
these two, Desire and Combat, is hard in-
deed to recognize — for the "male mind."

So absolutely interwoven are our existing j
concepts of maleness and humanness, so sure j
are we that men are people and women only,'
females, that the claim of equal weight and 1
dignity in human affairs of the feminine in- j
stincts and methods is scouted as absurd. \
We find existing industry almost wholly in
male hands; find it done as men do it; as-
sume that that is the way it must be done.

When women suggest that it could be
done differently, their proposal is waved
aside — ^they are "only women" — ^their ideas
are "womanish."

Agreed. So are men "only men," their
ideas are "mannish"; and of the two the
women are more vitally human than the
men, by nature.

238 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

The female is the race-type — the man t
variant.

The female, as a race-type, having the
female processes besides, best performs the
race processes. The male, however, has with
great difficulty developed them, always
heavily handicapped by liis maleness; being
in origin essentially a creature of sex, and so
dominated almost exclusively by sex inL-^
pulses. I

The human instinct of mutual service is -
checked by the masculine instinct of com-
bat ; the human tendency to specialize in la-
bor, to rejoicingly pour force in Knes of spe-
cialized expression, is checked by the pre-
dacious instinct, which will exert itself for
reward; and disfigured by the masculine in-
stinct of self-expression, which is an entirely
different thing from the great human out-
pouring of world force.

Great men, the world's teachers and lead-
ers, are great in himianness; mere maleness
does not make for greatness unless it be in
warfare — a disadvantageous glory! Great
women also must be great in humanness; but
their female instincts are not so subversive

INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 239

of human progress as are the instincts of the
male. To be a teacher and leader, to love
and serve, to guard and guide and help, are
weU in Hne with motherhood.

"Are they not also in line with father-
hood?" will be asked; and, "Are not the
father's paternal instincts masculine?"

No, they are not; they diflfer in no way
from the maternal, in so far as they are
beneficial. Parental functions of the higher
sort, of the human sort, are identical. The
father can give his children many advan-
tages which the mother can not; but that is
due to his superiority as a human being. He
possesses far more knowledge and power in
the world, the human world; he himself is
more developed in human powers and
processes; and is therefore able to do much
for his children which the mother can not;
but this is in no way due to his masculinity.
It is in this development of hirnian powers
in man, through fatherhood, that we may
read the explanation of our short period of
androcentric culture.

So thorough and complete a reversal of
previous relation, such continuance of what

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

I

appears in every way an unnatural position,
must have had some justificrtion in racial
advantages, or it could not have endured.
This is its justification; the estahlishment of
humanness in the male; he heing led into it,
along natural lines, by the exercise of pre-
viously existing desires.

In a male culture the attracting forces
must inevitably have been, we have seen, De-
sire and Combat. These masculine forces,
acting upon human processes, while neces-
sary to the uphfting of the man, have been
anything but uplifting to civilization. A
sex which thinks, feels and acts in terms of
combat is difficult to harmonize in the smooth
bonds of human relationship; that they have
succeeded so well is a beautiful testimony to
the superior power of race tendency over
sex tendency. Uniting and organizing,
crudely and temporarily, for the common
hunt; and then, with progressive elaboration,
for the common fight; they are now using
the same tactics^and the same desires, un-
fortunately — in common work.

Union, organization, complex inter-
service, are the essential processes of a grow-

INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 241

ing society; in them, in the ever-increasing
discharge of power tdong widening lines of
action, is the joy and health of social life.
But so far men combine in order to better
combat; the mutual service held incidental
to the common end of conquest and plunder.

In spite of this the overmastering power
of humanness is now developing among
modern men immense organizations of a
wholly beneficial character, with no purpose
but mutual advantage. This is true human
growth, and as such will inevitably take the
place of the sex-prejudiced earlier processes.

The human character of the Christian re-
ligion is now being more and more insisted
on; the practical love and service of each and
all; in place of the old insistence on Desire —
for a Crown and Harp in Heaven, and Com-
bat — with that everlasting Adversary.

In economics this great change is rapidly
going on before our eyes. It is a change in
idea, in basic concept, in our theory of what
the whole thing is about. We are beginning
to see the world, not as "a fair field and no
favor" — not a place for one man to get
ahead of others, for a price; but as an estab-

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

lishment belon^ng to us, the proceeds of
which are to be applied, as a matter of
course, to human advantage.

In the old idea, the wholly masculine idea,
based on the processes of sex-combat, the
advantage of the world lay in having "the
best man win." Some, in the first steps of
enthusiasm for Eugenics, think so still ;
imagining that the primal process of pro-
moting evolution through the paternity of
the conquering male is the best process.

To have one superior lion kill six or sixty
inferior lions, and leave a progeny of more
superior lions behind him, is all right — for
Uons; the superiority in fighting being all
the superiority they need.

But the man able to outwit his fellows, to
destroy them in physical, or ruin in finan-
cial, combat, is not, therefore, a superior hu-
man creature. Even physical superiority, as
a fighter, does not prove the kind of vigor
best calculated to resist disease, or to adapt
itself to changing conditions.

That our masculine culture in its effect on
Economics and Industry is injurious, is
clearly shown by the whole open page of

I

INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 243

history. From the simple beneficent activ-
ities of a matriarchal period we follow the
same lamentable steps; nation after nation.
Women are enslaved and captives are en-
slaved; a military despotism is developed;
labor is despised and discouraged. Then
when the irresistible social forces do bring
us onward, in science, art, commerce, and
all that we call civilization, we find the same
check acting always upon that progress ; and
the really vital social processes of produc-
tion and distribution, heavily injured by the
financial combat and carnage which rages
ever over and among them.

The real development of the people, the
forming of finer physiques, finer minds, a
higher level of efiiciency, a broader range of
enjoyment and accompUshment— is bin-
dered and not helped by this artificially
maintained "struggle for existence," this
constant endeavor to eliminate what, from a
masculine standard, is "unfit."

That we have progressed thus far, that we j
are now moving forward so rapidly, is in.'
spite of and not because of our androcentric
culture.

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

CHAPTER XIV

A HUMAN WORLD

IN the change from the dominance of one
sex to the equal power of two, to what
may we look forward? What effect
upon civilization is to be expected from the
equality of womanhood in the human race?
To put the most natural question first —
what will men lose by it? Many men are
genuinely concerned about this; fearing
some new position of subservience and dis-
respect. Others laugh at the very idea of
change in their position, relying as always
on the heavier fist. So long as fighting was
the determining process, the best fighter
must needs win; but in the rearrangement
of processes which marks our age, superior
physical strength does not make the poorer
wealthy, nor even the soldier a general.
The major processes of life to-day are
te within the powers of women; women

A HUMAN WORLD

are fulfilling their new relations more and
more successfully; gathering new strength,
new knowledge, new ideals. The change is
upon us; what will it do to men?

No harm.

As we are a monogamous race, there will
be no such drastic and cruel selection among
competing males as would eliminate the vast
majority as unfit. Even though some be
considered imfit for fatherhood, all human
life remains open to them. Perhaps the
most important feature of this change comes
in right here ; along this old line of sex-selec-
tion, replacing that power in the right
hands, and using it for the good of the race.

The woman, free at last, intelligent,
recognizing her real place and responsibil-
ity in life as a human being, vrill be not less,
but more, efficient as a mother. She wiU
understand that, in the line of physical evo-
lution, motherhood is the highest process;
and that her work, as a contribution to an
improved race, must always involve this
great function. She will see that right par-
entage is the purpose of the whole scheme
of sex-relationship, and act accordingly.

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

In our time, his human faculties being
sufficiently developed, civilized man can
look over and around his sex limitations, and
begin to see what are the true purposes and
methods of human life.

He is now beginning to learn that his
own governing necessity of Desire is not
the governing necessity of parentage, but
only a contributory tendency; and that,
in the interests of better parentage,
motherhood is the dominant factor, and
must be so considered.

In slow reluctant admission of this fact,
man heretofore has recognized one class of
women as mothers; and has granted them
a varying amount of consideration as such;
but he has none the less insisted on main-
taining another class of women, forbidden
motherhood, and merely subservient to his
desires; a barren, mischievous unnatural re-
lation, wholly aside from parental purposes,
and absolutely injurious to society. This
k whole field of morbid action will be ellm-
jiinated from human hfe by the normal de-
l 'velopment of women.

It is not a question of interfering with or

A HUMAN WORLD 347

punishing men ; still less of interfering with
or punishing women ; but purely a matter of
changed education and opportunity for
every child.

Each and all shall be taught the real na-
ture and purpose of motherhood; the real
nature and purpose of manhood; what each
is for, and which is the more important. A
new sense of the power and pride of woman-
hood will waken; a womanhood no longer
sunk in helpless dependence upon men; no
longer Umited to mere unpaid house-service ;
no longer blinded by the false morality
which subjects even motherhood to man's
dominance; but a womanhood which will
recognize its pre-eminent responsibility to
the human race, and live up to it. Then,
with all normal and right competition among
men for the favor of women, those best
fitted for fatherhood will be chosen. Those
who are not chosen will live single — -per-
force.

Many, under the old mistaken notion of
what used to be called the "social necessity"
of prostitution, will protest at the idea of its
extinction.

848 THE MAS-MADE WORLD

'It is naxssaiy to hare it," they will say.
'Necessary to whomt^

Not to the women hideously sacrificed to
it, surely.

Not to society, honey-combed with dis-
eases due to this cause.

Not to the family, weakened and impov-
erished by it.

To whom then? To the men who want it?

But it is not good for them, it promotes
all manner of disease, of vice, of crime. It
is absolutely and unquestionably a ''social
evU."

An intelligent and powerful womanhood
will put an end to this indulgence of one
sex at the expense of the other and to the
injiuy of both.

In this inevitable change will lie what
some men will consider a loss. But only
those of the present generation. For the
sons of the women now entering upon this
new era of world life will be differently
reared. They will recognize the true rela-
tion of men to the primal process; and be
amazed that for so long the greater values
have been lost sight of in favor of the less.

A HUMAN WORLD 249

This one change will do more to promote
the physical health and beauty of the race;
to improve the quality of children born, and
the general vigor and purity of social Kfe,
than any one measure which could be pro-
posed. It rests upon a recognition of moth-
erhood as the real base and cause of the
family; and dismisses to the limbo of all out-
worn superstition that false Hebraic and
grossly androcentric doctrine that the
woman is to be subject to the man, and that
he shall rule over her. He has tried this
arrangement long enough — ^to the grievous
injury of the world. A higher standard of
happiness will result; equality and mutual
respect between parents; pure love, unde-
filed by self-interests on either side; and a
new respect for Childhood.

With the Child, seen at last to be the gov-
erning purpose of this relation, with all the
best energies of men and women bent on
raising the standard of life for all children,
we shall have a new status of family life
which will be clean and noble, and satisfying
to all its members.

The change in all the varied lines of hu-

250 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

man work is beyond the powers of any pres-
ent day prophet to forecast with precision.
,'A new grade of womanhood we can clearly

'"'^ foresee; proud, strong, serene, independent;
great mothers of great women and great
men. These will hold high standards and
draw men up to them; hy no compulsion
save nature's law of attraction. A clean
and healthful world, enjoying the taste of
life as it never has since racial babyhood,
with homes of quiet and content — this we
can foresee.
^ Art, in the extreme sense, will perhaps
always belong most to men. It would seem
as if that ceaseless urge to expression, was,
at least originally, most congenial to the
male. But apphed art, in every form, and
art used directly for transmission of ideas,
such as literature, or oratory, appeals to
women as much, if not more, than to men.
We can make no safe assumption as to
what, if any, distinction there will be in the

' free human work of men and women, until
we have seen generation after generation
grow up under absolutely equal conditions.
In all our games and sports and minor so-

p

A HUMAN WORLD 301

rial customs, such changes will occur as must
needs follow upon the rising dignity allotted
to the woman's temperament, the woman's
point of view; not in the least denying to
men the fullest exercise of their special pow-
ers and preferences; but classifying these
newly, as not human — merely male. At
present we have pages or columns in our
papers, marked as "The Woman's Page,"
"Of Interest to Women," and similar de-
limiting titles. Similarly we might have dis-
tinctly masculine matters so marked and
specified ; not assumed as now to he of gen-
eral human interest.

The effect of the change upon Ethics and
Reli^on is deep and wide. With the en-
trance of women upon full human Ufe, a
new principle comes into prominence; the
principle of loving service. That this is the
governing principle of Christianity is be-
lieved by many; but an androcentric inter-
pretation has quite overlooked it; and made,
as we have shown, the essential dogma of
their faith the desire of an entemal reward
and the combat with an eternal enemy.

The feminine attitude in life is wholly

353 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

different. As a female she has merely to
be herself and passively attract; neither to
compete nor to pursue; as a mother her
whole process is one of growth ; first the de-
velopment of the live child within her, and
the wonderful nourishment from her own
body; and then all the later cultivation to
make the child grow; all the watching,
teaching, guarding, feeding. In none of
this is there either desire, combat, or self-
expression. The feminine attitude, as ex-
pressed in religion, makes of it a patient
practical fulfillment of law; a process of
large sure improvements; a limitless com-
forting love and care.
f This full assurance of love and of power;
this endless cheerful service; the broad pro-
vision for all people; rather than the com-
petitive selection of a few "victors;" is the
natural presentation of religious truth from
the woman's viewpoint. Her governing
principle being growth and not combat; her
main tendency being to give and not to get;
she more easily and naturally lives and
teaches these religious principles. It is for
this reason that the broader, gentler teach-

A HUMAN WORLD 26S

ing of the Unitarian and Universalist sects
have appealed so especially to women, and
that so many women preach in their
churches.

This principle of growth, as applied and
used in general human life, will work to far
other ends than those now so painfully vis-
ible.

In education, for instance, with neither
reward nor punishment as spur or bait; with
no competition to rouse effort and animos-
ity, but rather with the feeling of a gardener
towards his plants; the teacher will teach
and the children learn, in mutual ease and
happiness. The law of passive attraction
applies here, leading to such ingenuity in
presentation as shall arouse the child's in-
terest; and, in the true spirit of promoting
growth, each child will have his best and
fullest training, without regard to who is
"ahead" of him, or her, or who "behind."

We do not sadly measure the cabbage-
stalk by the corn-stalk, and praise the com
for getting ahead of the cabbage — ^nor in-
cite the cabbage to emulate the com. We

THE MAN-MADE WORLD

nourish each, to its hest growth — and are
the richer.

That every child on earth shall have right
conditions to make the best growth possible
to it ; that every citizen, from birth to death,
shall have a chance to learn all he or she
can assimilate, to develop every power that
is in them — for the common good ; — this will
be the aim of education, under human man-
agement.

In the world of "society" we may look
for very radical changes.
/ With all women full human beings,
trained and useful in some form of work,

/ the class of busy idlers who run about for-

1 ever "entertaining" and being "entertained"

I will disappear as utterly as will the prosti-

^ tute. No woman with real work to do could

have the time for such petty amusements;

or enjoy them if she did have time. No

woman with real work to do, work she loved

and was well fitted for, work honored and

well-paid, would take up the Unnatural

Trade. Genuine relaxation and recreation,

all manner of healthful sports and pastimes,

beloved of both sexes to-day, will remain,

I

A HUMAN WORLD 255

of course; but the set structure of "social
functions" — so laughably misnamed — will
disappear with the "society women" who
make it possible. Once active members of
real Society, no woman could go back to
"society," any more than a roughrider could
return to a hobbyhorse.

New development in dress, wise, comfort-
able, beautiful, may be confidently expected,
as woman becomes more human. No fully
human creature could hold up its head un-
der the absurdities our women wear to-day
— and have worn for dreary centuries.
'^ So on through all the aspects of life we
may look for changes, rapid and far-reach-
ing; but natural and all for good. The im-
provement is not due to any inherent moral
superiority of women ; nor to any moral in-
feriority of men; men at present, as more'J
human, are ahead of women in all distinctly |
human ways; yet their maleness, as we have/
shown repeatedly, warps and disfigures |
their humanness. The woman, being by na-'
ture the race-type, and her feminine func-
tions being far more akin to human func-
tions than are those essential to the male,

2116 THE MAN-MADE WORLD

will bring into human life a more normal
influence.

I Under this more normal influence our
/present perversities of function will, of
(course, tend to disappear. The directly ser-
viceable tendency of women, as shown in
Wery step of their public work, will have
small patience with hoary traditions of ab-
surdity. We need but look at long recorded
facts to see what women do — or try to do,
when they have opportunity. Even in their
crippled, smothered past, they have made
valiant efforts — ^not always wise — ^in charity
and philanthropy.

In our own time this is shown through all
the length and breadth of our country, by
the Woman's Clubs. Little groups of
women, drawing together in human^ rela-
tion, at first, perhaps, with no better pur-
pose than to "improve their minds," have
grown and spread; combined and federated;
and in their great reports, representing hun-
dreds of thousands of women — ^we find a
splendid record of human work. They
strive always to improve something, to take
care of something, to help and serve and

I

A HUMAN WORLD 231

benefit. In "village improvement," in trav-
eling libraries, in lecture courses and ex-
hibitions, in promoting good legislation; in
many a line of noble effort our Women's
Clubs show what women want to do.

Men do not have to do these things
through their clubs, which are mainly for
pleasure; they can accomplish what they
wish to through regular channels. But the
character and direction of the influence of
women in human affairs is conclusively es-
tablished by the things they already do and
try to do. In those countries, and in our
own states, where they are already fuU citi-
zens, the legislation introduced and pro-
moted by them is of the same beneficent
character. The normal woman is a strong
creature, loving and sei'vieeable. The kind ,
of woman men are afraid to entrust with 1
political power, selfish, idle, over-sexed, or I
ignorant and narrow-minded, is not normal, /
but is the creature of conditions men have/
made. We need have no fear of her, for,'
she will disappear with the conditions which'
created her.

In older days, without knowledge of the

258 THE MAN-MADE WORLD.

natural sciences, we accepted life as static.
If, being bom in China, we grew up with
foot-bound women, we assumed that women
were such, and must so remain. Born in
India, we accepted the child-wife, the pitiful
child-widow, the ecstatic mttee, as natural
expressions of womanhood. In each age,
each country, we have assumed life to be
necessarily what it was — a moveless fact.

All this is giving way fast in our new
knowledge of the laws of life. We find that
Growth is the eternal law, and that even
rocks are slowly changing. Human life is

(seen to be as dynamic as any other form;
and the most certain thing about it is that
it will change. In the light of this knowl-
edge we need no longer accept the load of
what we call "sin;" the grouped misery of
poverty, disease and crime; the cumbrouSj
inefficacious, wasteful processes of life to-
day, as needful or permanent.
f We have but to learn the real elements in
humanity; its true powers and natural char-
acteristics; to see wherein we are hampered
by the wrong ideas and inherited habits of
\ earlier generations, and break loose from

A HUMAN WORLD 359

them — ^then we can safely and swiftly intro-
duce a far nobler grade of living.

Of all crippling hindrances in false ideas, |
we have none more universally mischievous/
than this root error about men and womenJ
Given the old androcentric theory, and we
have an androcentric culture — the kind we
so far know; this short stretch we call "his-
tory;" with its proud and pitiful record.
We have done wanders of upward growth —
for growth is the main law, and may not be
whoUy resisted. But we have hindered, per-
verted, temporarily checked that growth,
age after age; and again and again has a
given nation, iar advanced and promising,
sunk to ruin, and left another to take up
its task of social evolution ; repeat its errors
— and its failure.

One major cause of the decay of nations
is "the social evil"— a thing wholly due to
the androcentric culture. Another steady
endless check is warfare — due to the same
cause. Largest of all is poverty; that .-.
spreading disease which grows with our so-
cial growth and shows most horribly when
and where we are most proud, keeping step.

THB MAN-MADE WORLD.

^

as it were, with private wealth. This, too,
in large measure, is due to the false ideas on
industry and economies, based, Uke the oth-
ers mentioned, on a whoUy masculine view
of life.

By changing our underlsang theory in
this matter, we change all the resultant as-
sumption; and it is this alteration in our
basic theory of hfe which is being urged.

The scope and purpose of human hfe is
entirely above and beyond the field of sex
relationsliip. Women are human beings, as
much as men, by nature; and as women, are
even more sympathetic with human
processes. To develop human life in its
true powers we need full equal citizenship
for women.

The great woman's movement and labor
movement of to-day are parts of the same
pressure, the same world-progress. An

[economic democracy must rest on a free
womanhood; and a free womanhod in-
evitably leads to an economic democracy.

BOOKS BY CHARLOTTE PERKINS OILMAN

"THE YELLOW WJLLLPA.PBR"

thy oi a place beside same of the weird master-
of Hawthorne and Poe. — LiUraiure,

As a abort story it stands among the most powerful
produced in America. —Chicago News.

By mail of Charlton Co., $0.50.

THE FORERUNNER

by

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

67 WaU Street, New York City
n. S. A.

SDBSCRIPTIQN PER YBAB.

Domestic fi.oo

{'aoadiau I.IJ

Foreign 1.15

This m&gadae carries Mrs. Gilmon's best and newest
woik, her locial philosophy, verse, satire, fiction, ethical
teaching, humor and opinion.

It stands for Humanness in Women and Men ; for
better methods In Child Culture; for the New Ethics, the
better Economics — the New World wa arc to make, are
making. The breadth of Mrs. Giluan'a thought and her
power of expressing it have made her well-known in
America and Europe as a leader along lines of human
improvement *nd a champion of woman.

THE FORBRDNNER voices her thonght and its
messages are not only many, but •trong, true and vital.

CHARLTON COMPANY. 6T Wall St.. New York

BOOKS BY CHARLOTTE PERKINS OILMAN

<< WOMEN AND BCONOMICS"

Since John Stuart Mill's essay there has been no
book dealing with the whole position of women to
approach it in originality of concration and brilliancy
of exposition. — London Chronicle.

The most significant utterance on the subject since
Mill's "Subjection of Women." --The NaHon.

It is the strongest book on the woman question that
has yet been published. — Minneapolis Journal.

A remarkable book. A work on economics that has
not a dull page, — ^the work of a woman about women
that has not a flippant word. — Boston Transcript.

This book unites in a remarkable de^ee the charm
of a brilliantly written essay with the inevitable logic
of a proposition of Euclid. Nothing that we have
read for man^r a long day can approach in clearness
of conception, in power of arrangement, and in lucidity
of expression the argument devdoped in the first seven
chapters of this remarkable book.

— Westminster Gazette, London.

Will be widely read and discussed as the cleverest,
fairest, most forcible presentation of the view of the
rapidl^r increasing group who look with favor on the
extension of industrial employment to women.

^Political Science Quarterly.

By mail of Charlton Co., $1.50.

''Women and Bconomica** has been translated into German.
Dutch, Italian, Hungarian, Russian and Japanese.

^'CONCBRNING CHILDREN"

Wanted : — ^A philanthropist, to give a copy to every
English-speaking parent — The Times, New York.

Should be read by every mother in the land.

— The Press, New York.

Wholesomely disturbing book that deserves to be
read for its own sake. — Chicago Dial.

By mail of Charlton Co., $1.25.

** Concerniag Children *' has been translated into German. Dutch
and Yiddish.

CHARLTON COMPANY, 6T Wall St.. New York

BOOKS BY CHARLOTTE PERKINS OILMAN

<<IN THIS OUR WOBXrD"

There is a Joyous superabundance of life, of
strength, of health, in Mrs. Gilman's verse, which
seems born of the glorious sunshine and rich gardens
of California. —Washington Times,

The freshness, charm and geniality of her satire
temporarily convert us to her most advanced views.

— Boston Journal.

The poet of women and for women, a new and
prophetic voice in the world. Montaigne would have
rejoiced in her. -^Mexican Herald.

By mail of Charlton Co., $1.25.

«THB HOME''

Indeed, Mrs. Gilman has not intended her book so
much as a treatise for scholars as a surgical operation
on the popular mind. — The Critic, New York.

Whatever Mrs. Gilman writes, people read — ^approv-
ing or protesting, still they read.

— Republican, Springfield, Mass.

Full of thought and of new and striking suggestions.
Tells what the average woman has and ought not keep,
what she is and ought not be. — Literature World,

But it is safe to say that no more stimulating arraign-
ment has ever before taken shape and that the argument
of the book is noble, and, on the whole, convincing.

— Congregationalist, Boston.

The name of this author is a guarantee of logical
reasoning, sound economical principles and progressive
thought — The Craftsman, Syracuse,

By mail of Charlton Co., $1.00.

''The Home '* has been translated into Swedish.

CHARLTON COMPANY, 6T Wall St.. New York

BOOKS BY

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Moving the Mountain.

A Utopia at short range. How we might change this
country in thirty years, if we changed our minds first.
Mrs. Oilman's latest book, like her earliest verse, is a
protest against the parrot cry that "you can't alter human
nature."

By mail of Charlton Co |i • lo

What Diantha Did.

A Novel.
''What she did was to solve the domestic service
problem for both mistress and maid in a southern Cali*
fomia town." ''The Survey^

'*A sensible book, it gives a new and deserved com-
prehension of the importance and complexity of house-
keeping." "7%^ Independent:^

"Mrs. Perkins Gilman is as full of ideas as ever, and
her Diantha is a model for all young women."

''THe EnglishTvoman:*
By mail of Charlton Co fi • lo

_ THE CRUX

This book marks a distinct advance in Mrs. Oilman's
power as a writer of fiction.

It is a smooth, pleasant, natural sort of story, out of
which suddenly blazes the new morality, saying: ''Beware
of a Biological Sin ; for that there is no forgiveness."

It is a story expressly written for girls, yet there will
be many who would by no means allow girls to have such
knowledge, though it would save many girls.

By mail of Charlton Co |i. lo

Charlton Co., 61 Wall St., New York

' ''r* >

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3 tlOS DD4 IflS 375

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^H W 1 2 1971